The new age calls for the fast and automated workforce to compete in the market. Today, in the hive of activity in both domestic and commercial domains, the use of software-intensive products has gone through the roof.

Therefore, the need for fast software development is increasing day-by-day. This need for quick software demands a faster but efficient approach to software development has increased globally

Consequently, different methods have appeared in software project management over the last 10 years. Various project management methodologies with each following different management styles like Six Sigma, Scrum, Waterfall and more have been designed.

The latest methodologies used in the development of software are Agile and DevOps. 

Both Agile and DevOps are the trendiest topic in the tech world.

Both DeOps and Agile aims to deliver the final product as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Since the goal target for the two is same, they are often the topic of never-ending discussion like which is better or how both are different or which would be better for an organization. 

While DevOps and Agile complement each other to some extent, they are several differences which set them apart.

If you want to learn the differences between them then read on.

What is Agile?

The buzzword Agile is another well-known methods of software development cycle.

Agile can be defined as an software development approach is to bring agility to development. The rapid development process divides it into the smaller parts by using different execution tools like Scrum and kanboard.

If we talk about its Origins, the Agile manifesto was introduced by small group of people. The Agile Manifesto comes with the four valuable factors which were the focus should be more software development instead of documentation, customer feedback should a priority, and the development process should adapt to change smoothly.

There are many benefits of Agile Methodology: 

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  By incorporating Agile methodology in business, it minimizes the risks involving in deliver, budget and changes.
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  The focus on the customer feedback and the team with unrestricted skill set leads to better and fast software development.
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  According to a research, 84% achieved faster-time-to-market by employing Agile approach.

What is DevOps?

The term DevOps is the portmanteau of “Development” and “operations which was first coined by Patrick Debois. The DevOps methodology emphasis on the “development” and “operation” of entire software development cycle.

As DevOps is all about automation, the process of testing and deploying becomes faster with with fixing bugs at every stage. 

DevOps, going one step forward, improved the security of the software development cycle wit automation testing.

The overall approach of DevOps is to increase the development process by increase time to market with new releases and enhanced features, promote collaboration between team involved in the process and communication.

Difference between Agile and DevOps

As mentioned earlier, the end goal of both Agile and DevOps is the same in terms of speeding up the application development process.The two methodologies were designed to fight against “silos” where the work was done by separate teams with minimum to know communication and les team work. This was the reason for delayed delivery and more time in fixing the bugs and errors.

It’s is rightly said that DevOps negates some of Agile aspects but it could also be right to state that there are similarities as well and one does not need to adopt only one of them:

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  In software development cycle, to produce the efficient product in a short time and without much effort, both DevOps and Agile play an important role.
  
  
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  The both work to improvement the business productivity
  
  
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  Promote collaboration between the teams when selecting the technique to carry out the swift software development process.

Now that we have covered the basic similarities between the two methodologies, let’s jump right into differences and see which meet your development DevOps or Agile:

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  Methodology: Agility method focus on a repetitive approach on collaboration, customer response and quick version release. Whereas DevOps is concept with key focus on collaboration, integration and accelerated product development.

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  Agility: In Agile, agility is only limited to development while DevOps bring forth agility in both development and operation.

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  Release Cycles: DevOps focus on smaller release cycles with swift feedback. Agility emphasis on smaller release cycles only.

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  Scope of Work: DevOps is all about automation and agility while Agility works on agility only.

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  Cross functional vs. fragmentation: When working in a team, the approach is different. Member of agile team are not restricted to their own specialized work but are skilled enough to do all sorts of work while promoting communication among the team members and speed up the development cycle.

DevOps on the hand ask for a team pertaining to development and operation. All the members of the team are experts in their own fields and work together by communicating.

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  Testing and Continuous Implementation: DevOps focuses on testing the early stages of development and continuous implementation. Agile overall focus in the software development.

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  Customer-focus vs. Business Value: In Agile, the primary focus is on delivering the value to the customer, whereas DevOps is all about business value. Both are important for business growth.

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  Documentation: In DevOps environment, documentation is important as team consists of people belonging to different fields and the documentation is send to another team (operational team) to complete deployment process. 

In Agility, the priority is on the working of software. The documentation is not needed as the team member constantly communicates. However, this could problematic if the project is required to be delivered to other team without proper documentation.

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  Automation: the deployment to be carried out smoothly, automation is the foundation of DevOps. The automation helps with the efficient software deployment.

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  Working Tools: For Agile, we can use JIRA, Kanboard and for DevOps, tools AWS, OpenStack and Chef are some of the widely used.

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  Quality: Agile approach results in good applications suites which meets the requirement. Agile can easily adapt to rapid change during the development cycles which helps deliver better quality product. As early bugs fix and automation is the emphasis in Devops, the end product is of high quality. 

In the End…

Every organization have different business need and by using both or one of them will help to reap the benefits and stand strong  against the larger established firms. The long-term company objective and goal will help in selecting the methodology - Agile or DevOps for better use. You are also advised to Learn DevOps and Agile both to sustain in the industry in a long run.