Implementing DevOps with Agile Principles

What is Agile and how is it different from DevOps?

Agile Methodology involves continuous iteration of development and testing in the SDLC process. The Agile development process breaks the product into smaller pieces and integrates them for final testing. It can be implemented in many ways, including scrum, kanban, scrum, XP, etc.

DevOps is a practice of bringing development and operations teams together. It focuses on constant testing and delivery implemented by a large team. On the other hand, Agile is an iterative approach that focuses on collaboration, customer feedback and small rapid releases. It focuses on constant changes and requires a small team. 

Mainly, DevOps addresses the gap between development and testing operations while Agile addresses the gap between client and the development and testing teams. JIRA, Bugzilla, Kanboard are popular Agile tools while DevOps uses Puppet, Chef, TeamCity OpenStack, AWS. 

However,  Agile offers a shorter development cycle and improved defect detection and DevOps supports Agile’s release cycle. Thus, DevOps must be implemented along with Agile to have an efficient delivery process. 

What are the practices of DevOps which are developed based on the agile principles?

Based on agile principles like individual interaction, customer collaboration, responding to constant change, DevOps has developed certain principles and practices which are:

• Bring Value to the customer by delivering smaller, frequent and continuous deployment of the software.
• Deliver working software in a shorter period of time. While agile focussed on delivering over a few weeks, DevOps aims to deliver small software updates over a few hours.
• Support changes to the requirements whenever the customer wants, based on the market trend. The software development methodology should be flexible enough to handle any changes asked by the customer and deliver them with comfort.
• Collaborate and work closely with all teams.
• Motivate the team, communicate regularly and give freedom to the team members and provide all support required to complete the tasks assigned to them. Maximize  communication via stand up meetings, review meetings etc.

It is visible that the theories and practices followed by DevOps are placed around the basic agile principles and are an extension of them. The focus is on bringing value to the customer through smaller deployments, faster deployments, and continuous deployments. This is done through collaboration with all the stakeholders so that every piece of information is available to the entire team and is kept in mind while developing the software. The team has to work together, unitedly to solve any problem – may it be related to design, architecture, testing or deployment or application performance. Additionally, technical debt needs to be minimized as much as possible. This means that every piece of the program must be attended to, to ensure quality throughout the process. Paying attention to details, excellence and focusing continuously on customers needs is very important at every stage.

How to enable DevOps in Agile methodology?

The following things have to be followed while implementing DevOps into Agile product development: 

• Improve Teamwork and Flow
• Adopt DevOps in Sprints
• Regular communication in each phase
• Service Backlog under DevOps
• Automation and using the right tools
• Measurement and Analysis
  • Percentage of release date adherences.
  • Percentage increase in release numbers.
  • Time taken for release to production.
  • Defects attributable to platform/support requirements.
  • Percentage of NFRs met.

 Conclusion

DevOps would be just another buzzword without the proper implementation of certain principles that sit at the heart of DevOps. Building a devops culture requires an organization to work as a unified team, from Development and Operations to stakeholders and management. That is what sets DevOps apart from other development models. When transitioning to DevOps, remember that these principles are not set in stone. Organizations should implement DevOps methodologies based on their goals, workflows, resources, and the team’s skill set.

If your organization is planning to implement DevOps, consider implementing it in stages. Depending on where your organization currently stands, you may want to build on an agile approach for DevOps implementation. A gradual implementation sequence might look like this:

1. Establish an agile development process
2. Adopt cloud computing
3. Adapt your processes to a CI and CD workflow
4. Automate your software deployment
5. Automate software testing
6. Implement continuous deployment

DevOps implementation comes with both  infrastructural and tooling shifts that require the proper infrastructure and tools to support processes. To create a true DevOps environment, each stage of the development pipeline should be as automated and agile as possible.