Question

What are the fundamental differences between DevOps & Agile?

Answer 1

The main differences between Agile and DevOps are summarized below:

Characteristics

Only Agility

Automation needed along with Agility

Focus Area

Main priority is Time and deadlines

Quality and Time management are of equal priority

Feedback Source

The main source of feedback - customers

The main source of feedback - self (tools used for monitoring)

Practices or Processes followed 

Practices like Agile Kanban, Scrum, etc., are followed.

Processes and practices like Continuous Development (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), etc., are followed.

Development Sprints or Release cycles

Release cycles are usually smaller.

Release cycles are smaller, along with immediate feedback.

Agility

Only development agility is present.

Both in operations and development, agility is followed.

Answer 2

Although DevOps shares some similarities with the Agile methodology, which is one of the most popular SDLC methodologies, both are fundamentally different approaches to software development. Following are the various fundamental differences between the two:

Agile Approach – The agile approach is only meant for development in Agile while the Devops approach is meant for both development and operations in DevOps.

Practices and Processes – While agile involves practices such as Agile Scrum and Agile Kanban, DevOps involves processes such as CD (Continuous Delivery), CI (Continuous Integration), and CT (Continuous Testing).

Priority – Agile prioritizes timeliness whereas, DevOps gives equal priority to timeliness and quality.

Release Cycles – DevOps offers smaller release cycles with immediate feedback while Agile offers only smaller release cycles without immediate feedback.

Feedback Source – Agile relies on feedback from customers while feedback from self (monitoring tools) is involved in DevOps.

Scope of Work – For Agile, the scope of work is agility only but for DevOps, it is agility and the need for automation.