Although Agile and DevOps may seem entirely different, they complement each other in an impactful way. Effectively adopting both methodologies can improve delivery predictability and quality, increase delivery velocity, and increase revenue.

In order to realize these benefits, it’s important for your organization to understand exactly what Agile and DevOps are and how they relate to one another.

How Agile and DevOps Work Together

Agile and DevOps have many of the same goals: to reduce time to value and to shorten feedback latency on successes and failures. Agile provides largely organizational methods for achieving this, and DevOps provides largely technical ones.

DevOps performs automatically what used to be a highly labor-intensive and variable process, maximizing efficiency and making project work more predictable.

These methods allow teams to make good on Agile’s promise of predictable, incremental, and flexible creation of valuable software.

Agile practices and DevOps techniques are not only complimentary; they are essential for each other’s success. Learn more about how Agile and DevOps interrelate:

What is Agile?

Agile is a project methodology typically used in software development that stresses frequent delivery of working software through an iterative looping process of 1-3 week increments called sprints. Agile emphasizes collaboration and transparency, meaning that development teams and stakeholders work closely together so that everyone knows how the project is progressing and can collaborate quickly on changing needs.

Agile is especially applicable for product development where outcomes are unclear and subject to frequent changes as new needs are discovered.

The values of Agile:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

Organizations that successfully adopt Agile practices realize benefits including:

Faster time-to-market Improved code quality Greater visibility and transparency within teams Enhanced employee satisfaction Improved efficiency

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a combination of tools, practices, and cultural philosophy that integrates processes between software development and operations teams in an organization. It removes barriers between the two teams, shortens the development lifecycle, and increases the speed at which an organization can deliver high-quality applications and services.

Reaching the promise of a true DevOps culture results in:

Tightened security Increased revenue Improved processes The right products released faster, more efficiently, and with fewer defects

What are Common Misconceptions About Agile and DevOps?

DevOps is a team name. DevOps is a philosophy and a set of practices. Renaming your Datacenter Operations Team to the DevOps Team does not guarantee that DevOps advantages will be realized.

DevOps lets me eliminate operations and support. DevOps is about better feedback, not team reduction. Only after efficiencies are gained should any enterprise reevaluate staff.

Agile is centered on ceremony. The principles of Agile and including incremental delivery and commitment are the core of the practice. Agile ceremonies should only be followed to the degree that they serve those principles.

An investment in Agile and DevOps will automatically help your organization grow. It’s important to adopt best practices in a strategic way that ensures employees have the necessary understanding and ability to implement and sustain change.

How Can AIM Consulting Help You Realize The Benefits of Agile and DevOps?

A successful DevOps transformation increases software delivery velocity and builds shared ownership among software stakeholders.

Adopting Agile ensures your organization can react to changes and deliver with quality and reliability.

At AIM Consulting, we offer expert guidance at every phase of your DevOps and Agile journey, from strategy and roadmap development, to implementation, to optimization and automation. We meet your teams where they are to adapt existing methods while introducing best practices for the current state of your organization.

This article was written as part of work I do at AIM Consulting, part of the Addison Group. Its original article can be found at https://aimconsulting.com/insights/how-do-agile-devops-interrelate/