Can DevOps be combined with Agile?

The current trend in the software industry tends to enable application development and deployment to become an essential part of business operations. Companies are starting to focus on implementing approaches like DevOps, which can help reduce the product development time. Companies developing with DevOps can shorten the phases required to deliver software. The shorter delivery time of software allows users to deploy it faster and add value to the business through feedback.

DevOps combined with Agile

The implementation of DevOps focuses on various aspects of the software, such as its operability, the automation and scalability of its processes, the way each version should be deployed, and its monitoring and long-term maintenance. The disadvantage of DevOps is that it does not support continuous testing of the codes backed up in agile development. Unlike DevOps, Agile focuses primarily on whether the product meets the customer's needs and focuses on rigorous testing.

Rather than developing with DevOps and Agile separately, the software industry can combine them in a way that benefits from their strengths, which can be achieved by combining Agile with the integrated teamwork offered by DevOps. Therefore, combining DevOps and Agile in software development is essential for increasing productivity and delivering high-quality software products. This approach can optimize the incremental development of software and its maintenance.

The advantages of the combination between DevOps and Agile

• The combination can create a model for the release process and increase the product's value.
• The combination can enable better collaboration.
• The combination can reduce the risk of release versions.
• The combination can address problems and fix bugs faster.
• The combination can improve transparency.
• The combination can improve product quality and meet the expectations of users.

Issues that need to be considered when combining DevOps with Agile

Let's learn more about the challenges of combining DevOps and Agile, and then achieving a higher level of productivity.

1. We need to build a positive relationship within the team to ensure a smooth workflow.

Team members should understand how to apply DevOps and Agile development methodologies collaboratively, broaden their horizons to find ways to make the most of both without causing any conflicts, and contribute to increasing the business value of the software. They should not only focus on the development cycle but also on aspects such as the software's maintenance, operability, and delivery. Moreover, they should also be experienced and know each version, service, adapting to changes, how to manage changes, and automation of tools.

2. Development schemes for combining DevOps with Agile

With the combination of DevOps and Agile, teams increasingly care about development schemes. Therefore, we should devise a proper development scheme to improve consistency, shorten development time, provide thorough testing for each release, and speed up the product delivery process. The development scheme should include a DevOps approach for the early development stages.

3. Approaches for adapting DevOps Agile

We have divided the development scheme into many Sprints, but it's time to devise a strategy to adequately cover DevOps within the Sprint in the context of the team.

Integrating DevOps in Sprints by following some guidelines

• When planning a Sprint, we should consult with operations staff and incorporate these views into the plan.
• In the next sprint, we have to keep DevOps in mind.
• We must take the features, functions, and operations of the product into account simultaneously.
• We must involve the DevOps team in Scrum's daily meetings, planning meetings, review meetings, and other agile development processes.

Quality assurance

Agile involves continuous testing and integration of each version, but in addition to functional testing, it does not provide performance and load testing, which is required for DevOps. Each version should contain these tests, and QA should be included in every stage of its development.

Implementing a to-do list in DevOps

To implement a to-do list in a DevOps framework, we need to consider the following aspects: software scalability, monitoring services, deployment capabilities, logging, alert settings, testing software, security issues, and operational effectiveness.

Automation of equipment

Workflow automation is an essential part of the combination of DevOps and Agile. To avoid potential vulnerabilities, all coding processes need to be automated.

Availability of documentation

Agile does not focus on documentation but on development, while DevOps has recorded software versions' design and other specifications. As a result, documentation remains indispensable.

ZenTao DevOps Solutions

The Agile development methodology provides a DevOps solution to ZenTao project management software of Scrum, which helps to plan and combine DevOps and Agile.

The support for DevOps and continuous integration in Zentao includes several aspects of Git and Subversion versioning system integration, Jenkins building tasks, and ZTF automated test scheduling. With Zentao's self-developed ZTF automation testing tool, it can drive eight unit testing frameworks and three automation testing frameworks to implement the tests and send the final results back to Zentao for a unified report presentation. Zentao ZTF fills the gap between project management and continuous integration tools throughout the different phases of DevOps development schemes, such as continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous deployment. Zentao, a professional DevOps solution.