What are the Differences Between DevOps and Agile? (Infographic)

People are often confused by DevOps and Agile in the software development industry.

You may have a lot of questions such as:

  • How are DevOps and Agile methodologies different?
  • Is one more secure?
  • Which one should I use?  (Just one or both)?

This infographic will break it down and simplify it for you.

Let’s start by understanding each one separately.

What is Agile?

This methodology takes an iterative and incremental approach to development.

  1. Involves producing release cycles on a continuous basis.
  2. Breaks the software down into small functional deliverables for customer approval
  3. Addresses the gaps in communication between customer and developer.
  4. Small and rapid releases, customer feedback, and collaboration are the focus of this model.
  5. Aims to bring agility to development.

What is DevOps?

This approach to operations focuses on communication, collaboration,  integration, and deployment.

  1. Promotes collaboration between operations and development to deploy releases to various environments.
  2. Automation, continuous feedback, discipline, and process development are the highlights of this model.
  3. Development teams make small but frequent updates to the production software which are often automatically deployed to environments
  4. Aims to bring agility to operations and deployments.

Top Differences between DevOps and Agile

Features DevOps Agile
Purpose Managing end-to-end engineering processes Managing software development projects
Processes/Practices Processes like Continuous Deployment (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Testing (CT), etc. Practices like Agile Kanban, Agile Scrum, etc.
Key Focus Area Equal priority on timeliness and quality Main priority on timeliness and integration with stakeholders
Goal To address the gap between operations and development and testing teams To address the gap between development and testing teams and customer needs
Task Focuses on constant testing and delivery Focuses on continuous manageable product improvements
Implementation A core focus on collaboration with no commonly-accepted framework Range of tactical frameworks including Sprint, Scrum, and Safe
Release Cycles/ Duration Smaller release or continuous-release cycles with immediate feedback; deadlines and benchmarks built around major releases Development is carried out in units of “sprints”; each sprint usually lasts about two weeks could take a month or less
Scope of Work Agility and the need for automation around deployment processes Agility around the development and feature delivery processes
Feedback Comes from internal team using monitoring tools Comes from customer
Cross-Functionality Development and operations work together; not separately Any team member is free to take up any required task within the project
Automation Primary goal in DevOps as it helps maximize efficiency No emphasis on automation
Advantage Allows rapid and automated deployment of new features, minimizes risk of deployment issues Capability to accommodate changes during the development phase as features are prioritized
Challenge Difficulty integrating build and deployment processes Difficulty estimating effort and requirements in the early stage of development

Which is Better?

The simple answer is neither. Each of these methodologies fills a different purpose and they are often used together.

Agile allows development teams deliver functionality more frequently.

DevOps allows more efficient build and deployment of delivered functionality to environments like QA, Pre-Prod, and Production.

In either case, secure coding and security testing are not implicitly part of the model.

This can cause a huge disconnect between developers and management in terms of application security.

Since security should be a major concern, it’s crucial that you use secure SDLC solutions in both development and deployment models to ensure your deployed applications are secure.

These solutions should:

  • Easily integrate into your existing process.
  • Reduce the overhead on your security team.
  • Support early integration to minimize redevelopment costs.
what is the difference between devops and agile infographic

About

Cypress Data Defense was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado with offices across the United States. Our goal is to help organizations secure their IT development and operations using a pragmatic, risk-based approach. The diverse background of our founders allows us to apply security controls to governance, networks, and applications across the enterprise.

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