Almost two decades ago, in 2001, the Agile Manifesto changed the entire development industry. It quickly became the leading framework used by both small and large companies to transform their development processes. In this article, we’ll take a look at the journey from Agile to DevOps to better understand this transformation.
WHAT IS AGILE?
In its most basic form, the Agile approach breaks down the large development tasks into smaller chunks of work, called Stories, which can be delivered in shorter intervals, called Sprints. This iterative process allowed for more control and correction within the process, as opposed to the old Waterfall or Big Bang approaches. Defects and process problems can be identified and corrected early on in the product life cycle.
The Agile approach has been refined over the past 20 years and, today, it is a highly efficient development methodology. While this methodology is great for the development and coding aspects of a project, it lacks some of the critical downstream process management of integration and deployment. Also, with the advent of automation within today’s processes, there is more to the software life cycle than that defined by the Agile banner.
THE EVOLUTION OF DEVOPS
Based on this evolution, a new notion has been introduced, called DevOps. DevOps, essentially, is an encapsulation of the entire software life cycle, including Agile development, automation, continuous integration (CI), and continuous deployment (CD). DevOps is not a replacement for Agile but an extension, taking into account more of the critical downstream processes and people.
Some key benefits of extending an Agile environment into DevOps include:
- Product stability and reliability
- Speed implementing new features
- Reduction in defects
- Faster time to market
- Collaboration between development and operations teams
Schedule a free demo with DATASCOPE today to learn more about implementing Agile and DevOps in your development and operations processes.