The gap between different development teams is shrinking with each passing day. There is more inclusion and acceptance of technologies and working methodologies amongst the teams. It is a known fact that application development and integration form the crucial part of any business operations. This has made businesses enhance the pace of software development, integration, and innovation with the help of DevOps and hybrid cloud architecture backed by Agile development methodologies.
DevOps is responsible for a more collective, productive relationship between the development and operations teams for smoother and quicker development cycles with minimized production risks.
The other benefits of DevOps are transparency, and fewer bugs to fix which means more productivity.
Incorporating Agile Development
Traditional development environments are slow in delivering and it is not an easy task to make changes in the development cycle. It is time that enterprise IT environments are upgraded to leverage the speed of the software and benefit from the innovations of Agile release cycles.
Integrating Agile in the workflow will need a regulated approach to maintain the automated processes. This will help the businesses to scale and optimize their resources and workflows. DevOps integration will bring the speed and transformation needed when associated with Agile methodologies.
Benefits of combining DevOps and Agile Integration
- Release processes are simplified, and better-quality product offerings are delivered.
- Allows for better collaboration.
- More value and fewer risks in each release.
- Fewer bugs and faster fixes.
- Increased visibility.
- Customer loyalty.
Factors to be considered while integrating DevOps and Agile
Below mentioned are some of the most common hiccups while implementing DevOps into Agile development and methods to overcome them.
- Seamless Teamwork
- Interpreting Software Lifecycle
- DevOps Adoption in Sprints
- Invite Ops/infrastructure/support personnel to plan sessions.
- Discuss product functionality and operability features.
- Include them in the upcoming sprint.
- Involve the DevOps team in sprint backlog planning and daily meetings, as well as sprint review and scrum and plan alignment.
- Quality Assurance
- Service Backlog
- Software Scalability
- Integration Efficiency
- Service monitoring
- Logging
- Alert Setting
- Testing capability
- Security and compliance details
- Operational performance
- Automation
- Documentation
- Measurement and Analysis
- Time taken from production to release.
- Percentage of release date adherences.
- Percentage increase in release numbers.
- Support requirements.
- Defects available in any platform.
- Percentage of NFRs (Non-Functional Requirement) met.
DevOps architecture and Agile approach will give a better idea about all of the development factors for team members. It makes communication easy and transparent.
All team members involved in the development process should consider software functioning and its delivery and maintenance. Teams will have a deeper understanding about the service, management, environment provisioning, release cycles, automation tools and application integration.
DevOps adds business value and agile brings practicality to the team.
DevOps principles when implemented at the beginning of the development cycle will save time and resources for all members of the team. This means fewer changes and minimal errors. DevOps and Agile together work on consistency and speed the product or service to the market.
Agile workflow assumes that the software development process is divided into sprints, and therefore it is strategic to integrate DevOps management while handling sprints.
Follow these instructions as you start working the DevOps approach into your Sprints.
The engagement and collaboration of your development team and operations team also keeps the Ops team abreast of functionality release timelines. The Ops team can then help the dev team in planning the release schedule with greater accuracy and can assist the dev team in shipping the product faster.
QA/Quality assurance is a mandatory factor when integrating DevOps and Agile. Testing frequently will rule out any possibility of errors at every stage. This will improve the performance and load testing of the software. Continuous development leads to smaller release cycles and reduced time to the market.
Service backlogging is a must under DevOps while combining it with Agile. DevOps structure must include the following elements:
Right Tools
Businesses should take advantage of the right tools for a successful implementation of Agile and DevOps in the development process. Right tools will aid in software development process configuration. It will in turn help to create and replicate the framework using IaaC (Infrastructure as a Code). Developers will find it easier to integrate applications on different types of platforms without re-creating the code/efforts.
Automating workflow is highly recommended when merging Agile and DevOps. Automation of code scanning processes will rule out any potential errors. Artifacts should be stored in a repository to simplify release cycles. This will enhance the overall productivity of the teams and there is less scope for errors.
Although Agile teams do not document minutes of meetings or any other communications, DevOps teams document the entire process till the software release. It is recommended that you have a draft of everything stored for future use.
You need to keep track of certain metrics after Agile and DevOps implementation to know the performance and progress of the workflow. This will also help you to establish multiple successful release cycles. Time and cost effective at the same time. As per the Scrum Alliance Organization, below are the few parameters that we need to keep track of:
Apart from the mentioned metrics, you are free to measure any number of parameters as per your business requirements.
Conclusion
DevOps and Agile combination and its benefits are clear now. No doubt combining these two practices helps companies to streamline and smoothen the product lifecycle and release. But it can disrupt the workflow of the organizations. Businesses should be open to changes and have a favorable environment that supports the practices. With the help of an expert and reliable team in the market, companies can leverage desired results and gain scalability. Embitel is one such front runner in the market today who has an array of clients who have had successful collaborations with the teams. Reach out to our team here.
