Other Guides
In this article
DevOps vs Agile Methodology: Key Differences & Applications
Ekene Eze 
Agile and DevOps are modern approaches organizations use to tackle some of the most complex challenges in software engineering. Whether used to complement each other or as separate methodologies, they can be tricky to define, and the line between the two often appears blurred.
Both DevOps and Agile are designed to help organizations build robust software. But when should you choose one over the other? Which approach works best for your project? Can you combine them effectively to maximize their benefits?
Having worked as an engineer on projects of all sizes, I’ve experienced firsthand how Agile and DevOps shape workflows and outcomes. In this guide, I’ll discuss their core principles, key differences, and practical use cases to help you decide which approach fits your needs.
DevOps vs. Agile: Core values and goals
Agile is a project management and software development approach that breaks down the project into several dynamic phases, known as sprints, rather than completing an entire project at once. This approach enables teams to adapt to changes quickly, continuously improve the delivery pipeline, and stay focused on meeting customer needs.
It was born from the Agile Manifesto in 2001 as a response to the challenges faced with traditional project management models like the Waterfall method, which often leads to delay, rigidness, and disconnects between customers’ demands and what developers have built.
The core values of Agile methodologies are:
- Individual over processes and tools: To prioritize human communication and collaboration across cross-functional teams rather than working independently.
- Responding to change over following a plan: To embrace changing requirements at every stage of the development process. The flexibility allows the team to quickly change workflow and strategies without derailing the entire project.
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: To incorporate continuous customer feedback and use it to shape the project deliverables and align the outcome.
- Working software over comprehensive documentation: To ensure that the software that Agile teams develop works effectively, while additional tasks like documentation should not take center stage in the development process.
When you use Agile in your application development or other types of software development process, it offers numerous benefits, such as:
- Responding quickly to market changes and customer feedback.
- Improving collaboration by fostering open communication, frequent iterations, and shared ownership.
- Increasing customer satisfaction throughout the development process.
- Enhancing quality through frequent reviews and continuous testing.
- Empowering teams to innovate and solve problems creatively.
DevOps, on the other hand, is a set of tools, practices, and a cultural philosophy that bridges the gap between development (Dev) and operations (Ops) to enhance the delivery pipelines. It emphasizes automation, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and monitoring to ensure rapid and reliable software deployment.
DevOps evolved as an extension of Agile to solve the bottleneck around operations, particularly in deployment, releases, and post-production maintenance. Its core values focus on:
- Collaboration and communication: Foster a culture where developers, IT operations teams, QA teams, and other stakeholders actively collaborate and communicate throughout the development process.
- Automation: Increase efficiency and minimize errors by automating repetitive tasks like testing, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning.
- Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Implement automated pipelines to test, integrate, and deploy code quickly and reliably.
- Metrics and monitoring: Use real-time monitoring and analytics to identify issues, optimize performance, and asses system health.
- Customer-centric focused: Center development and operations processes around delivering value to customers with high-quality releases that meet their needs.
- Continuous improvement: Establish a culture of seeing the DevOps process as not a one-time thing but rather a continuous process that promotes a feedback loop and learns from success and failure.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Treat infrastructure provisioning and maintenance as code to enable version control, scalability, and reproducibility.
When you adopt DevOps in your development process, it offers numerous benefits, such as:
- Accelerating software releases with streamlined processes and automation.
- Reducing operational costs through efficient workflows and fewer bottlenecks.
- Improving software quality with automated testing to reduce bugs and enhance reliability.
- Resolving issues faster using continuous monitoring and real-time system insights.
- Enhancing security by integrating security practices into the development lifecycle (DevSecOps).
- Gaining a competitive advantage through faster innovation and the ability to adapt quickly to market changes.
Both DevOps and Agile offer numerous benefits that help you and your team build robust and scalable applications. But when should you choose one over the other? And what types of projects are best suited for each approach?
Let’s dive into their usage and application next.
Identifying when to use Agile vs. DevOps
The table below summarizes when to use Agile and DevOps:
| Aspect | When to Use Agile | When to Use DevOps |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Building software step by step, improving as you go. | Combining development and operations for faster and smoother delivery. |
| Team Structure | Small teams working closely together, focusing on quick updates. | Developers and operations teams working as one from start to finish. |
| Goal | Deliver small, working parts of the project quickly and get feedback. | Deliver updates quickly and keep systems running smoothly. |
| When Changes Happen | Use Agile when project needs are likely to change often. | Use DevOps to handle changes quickly without breaking the system. |
| Project Size | Good for small to medium projects where teamwork and flexibility are key. | Good for large or complex projects where automation and speed are important. |
| Release Timing | Use Agile when you want planned updates (e.g., every two weeks). | Use DevOps when updates need to be released continuously. |
| Tools and Automation | Relies on planning tools like boards or trackers, with some automation. | Uses lots of automation tools to test, deploy, and monitor systems. |
| Customer Involvement | Use Agile when you need frequent feedback from customers. | Use DevOps when customers expect reliable and fast updates. |
| Example Projects | Developing a new app or adding new features to a product. | Running large systems or releasing updates to software quickly and often. |
Focus
If your workflow is to develop software in small, manageable parts, Agile will be ideal for you. For example, if you’re developing a new application, you can release the core features first, get feedback, and add more functionality over time.
DevOps, on the other hand, is perfect for delivering software quickly and maintaining its stability. For example, if you’re managing a large-scale ticketing platform, DevOps ensures updates without downtime.
Team structure
Agile works well with small teams of developers, designers, and testers where everyone can collaborate closely. For instance, if you’re building a product for a startup, Agile methodology guarantees everyone is aligned.
In contrast, DevOps facilitates collaboration between development and operations teams to manage the entire process, from writing code to running in production.
Project size and change frequency
Agile is well-suited for small to medium projects that want to launch their minimum viable product (MVP) or add new features to an existing platform that accounts for customers’ needs along the way.
DevOps, in contrast, is good for large or complex projects that involve infrastructure, automation, and scalability.
Project delivery
Agile uses sprint (a time-boxed iteration) for planned updates, which makes it ideal for projects that deliver new features frequently (e.g., every two weeks). Agile helps you stay organized and on schedule.
DevOps doesn’t use intervals like Agile, and it allows you to release updates as soon as they’re ready.
Customer involvement
Agile works best when you need regular feedback from the customer at every stage of the development. In contrast, DevOps is better suited for scenarios where customers prioritize fast responses and high uptime.
Usage of tools and automation
Agile keeps things simple by using tools like Jira and Trello to focus on planning and collaboration rather than heavy automation in DevOps, which relies on tools like Jenkins, Docker, and others that automate testing, deployment, and monitoring.
| Agile | DevOps |
|---|---|
| Jira (project management) | Jenkins (CI/CD automation) |
| Trello (task tracking) | Docker (containerization) |
| Confluence (team collaboration) | Kubernetes (orchestration) |
As a rule of thumb, use the summary table below to decide when starting a new project or expanding existing ones.
| Factor | Agile | DevOps |
|---|---|---|
| Small, cross-functional teams? | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Large teams requiring IT operations? | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| High variability in project complexity? | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Multi-stage delivery pipelines? | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Rare updates (deployment frequency)? | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Frequent releases (deployment frequency)? | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Need for automation (CI/CD or monitoring)? | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
Hybrid Situations: Combining Agile and DevOps
In complex projects, blending Agile’s adaptability with DevOps’ automation and deployment efficiency can produce the best results for you and your team. Below are some use cases where adopting both methodologies proves most beneficial:
- Large enterprise applications
- Mobile application development
- Microservices architecture
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) projects
Large enterprise applications
If you’re building a large enterprise application, you can break down feature development into smaller tasks and prioritize them in sprints using Agile. At the same time, DevOps helps maintain smooth delivery without downtime by automating testing, integration, and deployment. For instance, if you’re managing a video streaming service, you can use Agile to plan features like personalized recommendations and DevOps to deploy them continuously to users.
Mobile application development
Mobile app development and maintenance involve fixing bugs, adding new features, and ensuring compatibility with new devices. Agile software development methodology can streamline feature iterations, while DevOps facilitates rapid updates across app stores. For instance, if you’re building a fintech app that demands rapid feature development alongside robust security and reliability, Agile can help you build and iterate features efficiently. Meanwhile, DevOps can automate compliance checks, testing, and secure deployments to maintain quality and trust.
Microservices architecture
Microservices involves breaking down applications into smaller, independent services that can be developed and deployed separately. This approach aligns closely with Agile, as you can enable development teams to manage individual services, while DevOps facilitates seamless integration between these services and delivery.
AI and ML projects
Training, testing, and deploying AI models is an iterative process essential for keeping the system up to date. Agile practices can help you manage the iterative development of models and features, while DevOps can automate the deployment pipelines for updates and ensure effective monitoring in production.
The faster deployment cycles, higher customer satisfaction, and stable releases achieved through the combination of Agile and DevOps stem from the shared values between these software development methodologies. Let’s explore these similarities further.
Similarities between Agile and DevOps
Agile and DevOps are distinct methodologies, but they share some similarities in their goals, approaches, and principles for software development process and delivery. Below are some key similarities between Agile and DevOps:
- Both emphasize collaboration between developers, testers, and other stakeholders to break down silos and foster teamwork.
- They prioritize delivering value to customers.
- Both advocate for working in smaller chunks rather than completing the project in one big cycle.
- They align in their focus on shortening the development cycles and reducing the time to market.
- Both promote continuous learning and process optimization.
- Both encourage the use of automation tools to enhance processes and reduce manual tasks.
- Both Agile and DevOps cultures require a shift towards openness and shared responsibility.
While Agile and DevOps share common similarities, they also differ in focuses, principles, and practices. Let’s explore these differences next.
Differences between Agile and DevOps
Below are some key differences between Agile and DevOps:
- Agile primarily focuses on the development phase with an emphasis on iterative development and continuous feedback, while DevOps focuses on the entire software lifecycle by bridging the gap between development and operations.
- Agile’s core principle is customer-centric and welcomes changing requirements even late in the development process, while DevOps principle is to automate repetitive tasks, strive for efficiency in the delivery pipeline, and maintain reliable systems.
- The approach Agile uses to measure success is through speed, quality of software development, and customer satisfaction. DevOps, on the other hand, uses metrics like deployment frequency, mean time to recovery (MTTR), lead time for changes, and system reliability.
- Agile promotes a culture of collaboration and adaptability among the development team, while DevOps promotes a culture of shared responsibility and accountability across the development and operations team.
Next steps
Agile and DevOps differ in their approaches, addressing distinct aspects of software delivery. Agile is best suited for small to medium projects that change frequently and require a high degree of adaptability. In contrast, DevOps excels in medium to large projects where efficiency and reliability are paramount. Ultimately, the approach you choose depends on factors such as project complexity, release frequency, and team size.
If you’re considering adopting DevOps at any stage of your development process, explore our comprehensive DevOps roadmap for actionable steps and valuable resources to get started.
