The Fusion of DevOps and Agile

The current trends in the software industry have inclined towards making the application development and deployment a vital part of the business operations. The companies started concentrating on implementing approaches like DevOps Solution, which help in reducing the process of product development. The use of DevOps for development reduces the stages needed to deliver software. The short delivery time of the software allows the user to deploy the software early and adds value to the business by increasing the returns.

DevOps implementation mainly concentrates on various aspects of software such as the focus on the operability of the software, automation of the software process, scalability, and the better ways of deployment of every release and it’s monitoring along with its long term maintenance. The drawback to DevOps is that it doesn’t accommodate continuous testing of the code that is supported in Agile development. Agile mainly focuses on whether the product meets the customers’ requirements or not and hence focuses on rigorous testing, unlike the DevOps. Rather than using DevOps and Agile separately for development, it is convenient if they are brought together as one force extracting both of their strong points that will benefit the software industry. This can be done by incorporating the Agile sprints with the integrated teamwork provided by DevOps. So blending the DevOps and Agile methodologies for software development is a crucial requirement to increase the productivity and delivery of high-quality software products. This approach allows for optimized incremental development of the software and its maintenance.

Read More - Realistic Challenges Faced for Implementing DevOps in an Organization

• Creates a pattern for the release process and improves product value.
• Allows for better collaboration.
• Risks are reduced in every release.
• Resolving the errors and fixing the bugs is faster.
• Increase in transparency
• Due to the improvement in the quality of the product, the user is satisfied with his expectations.

In order not hit a snag, let us look into the challenges that pose a threat to the smooth integration of DevOps and Agile for software development and achieve higher productivity.

Building a Good Rapport within the Teams for Smooth Workflow

The team members should have a sense of understanding to work with the DevOps and Agile development methods together and should broaden their horizons and figure out ways to make the best use of it without raising conflicts and contributing towards increasing the business value of the software. The team members should not be concerned only about the development cycle but also concentrate on the aspects of maintenance, operability, and delivery of the software. The teams should be skilled and should possess the knowledge of each release, the service, accommodating change, how to manage change, automating the tools.

Outlining the Lifecycle

With the integration of the DevOps and Agile, the teams are now concerned about the operations throughout the development life cycle. Hence a proper development lifecycle should be drawn to improve the consistency, minimize the time of the development, provide thorough testing of each release, and speed up the process of product delivery. The development life cycle should include DevOps methods early in the development stage.

Adapting the DevOps for the Sprints

Agile methodology divides the development process into Sprints, but now it should devise a strategy to include DevOps in the Sprints correctly.

Follow These Guidelines for Your Sprints to Include DevOps:

• Include and ask for the opinion of the ops and support personnel while planning the Sprints.
• Product features and functionality should be discussed along with its operations.
• Take them into account for the upcoming Sprints.
• Try involving the DevOps team(s) in the planning as well as in the daily meeting of the sprint backlog, and also in the sprint review along with the scrum & plan alignment.

Inclusion of QA

Agile includes continuous testing and integration for every release, but it doesn’t provide for performance and load testing apart from functional, that is required for DevOps. So it should include these tests as well for every release. So the QA should be included at every stage of the development.

Enforce service Backlog under DevOps

Build the service backlog under DevOps framework during the collaboration that should include:

• Software Scalability.
• Monitoring the service.
• Deployment capability
• Logging.
• Alert setting.
• Testing the software.
• Security aspects. 
• Operational performance.

Equipping Automation

Workflow automation is an essential part of the blending of DevOps and Agile methods together. To avoid potential vulnerabilities, automate all the processes of coding.

Furnish the Documentation

Agile methods don’t concentrate on documentation; rather, they concentrate more on development, whereas DevOps document the design and other specs for a software release.

Related Reading - How Agile Methodology Transforms the Organizational Framework?

AddWeb Solutions can help you plan and integrate the DevOps and Agile for your organization. At AddWeb, we provide services that cater to the needs of our customers. We provide DevOps services and consulting. Our competent staff can help you and guide you for the necessary process and plan the integration of DevOps and Agile methods for development. With AddWeb Solution you can be worry free.