In a world of deep transformations, companies are called to answer to their customers faster, adapting the way they work to the new market needs. To do this they have to deal with two new software development methodologies: Agile and DevOps. Let’s see their characteristics and their differences.
Agile methodology consists in a set of software development practices that are at odds with the traditional ones and which purpose is to satisfy customers’ need to release software faster with more quality.
Agile methodology is older than DevOps one and was founded in 2001 by the “Manifesto for Agile software development” that gave it the name, with the purpose to reduce software’s failure risks creating smaller projects, called iteration, each of which develops a small part of the entire software. Acting this way, it is possible to reduce bugs and to make a more stable and maintainable software.
Another advantage is the reduction of documentation to be produced because of DevOps willingness to adopt a face-to-face real time communication that makes processes faster.
It is incorrect to believe that Agile and DevOps have nothing in common because DevOps is the Agile methodology improvement over time.
The greatest innovation is the introduction of the collaboration between Developers, who are more functionalities changing oriented, and Operations, whose aim is to reach stability and services improvement, during all product lifecycle phases. This collaboration can take lots of advantages in terms of product quality and its speed of implementation.
DevOps can extend Agile principles over the code, involving the whole service.
While Agile methodology is based on Values, Principles, Methods and Practices, DevOps added also Tools. According to the Agile Manifesto, tools were marginal, but then they took even more importance to satisfy the customers’ needs.
This is the real difference between the two methodologies: while Agile solves technological problems, DevOps works on the business and cultural levels towards a more reliable software able to reach the production phase faster with less obstacles during its lifecycle.
DevOps gives Developers and Operations the unique common objective to optimize the whole system instead of locals optimizations, to reach the perfect customer satisfaction.