As delivery methodologies, Agile and DevOps both focus on IT productivity. The first approach encourages Development and Operations to synchronize fast-paced development of production-ready code, with the operations like testing, deployment and management in order to prevent backlogs. DevOps stresses on effective collaboration and communication between the multiple stakeholders thereby creating a culture that enables optimized release cycles of high-quality and thoroughly-tested end-products. All Agile models in practice, follows concepts and principles which can be integrated with DevOps e.g. continuous build, continuous integration, Continuous delivery, incremental testing, etc.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of these models
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
The Scaled Agile Framework is developed by Dean Leffingwell and became very popular in no time. This framework is a combination of existing lean and agile principles with highly structured and prescriptive method that helps large enterprises to align their entire organization to agile.
To deliver value to the user, SAFe has already provisioned for DevOps to focus on tighter integration between development and deployment. So for team’s implementing SAFe, one can easily apply inbuilt DevOps by leveraging the framework guidelines about DevOps team and System Team to integrate the Ops, Dev Teams.
DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery)
DAD framework provides a cohesive approach to agile solution delivery. It is is a hybrid approach which suggests strategies from many Agile flavours like Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Lean Software Development, Unified Process (UP) and many other methods. DAD is a non-proprietary, freely available framework.
DevOps culture is in the core theme of the DAD framework. This framework covers all key aspects DevOps principles in operations strategies, teaming strategies, general strategies, and release management strategies. In-depth understanding of guidelines of this framework will help to develop strategies and effective correlation to DevOps for your organization.
LeSS (Large Scale Scrum)
Introduced by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman, LeSS framework, helps scrum team to scale up without adding additional processes or overheads. This framework helps organizations to dissolve unnecessary complexity and solving in problems in simpler ways.
Unlike SAFe, LeSS framework does not call out DevOps explicitly on it big picture but concepts like Technical excellence, Structure and Adoption cover key aspects of DevOps guidelines and principles. Technical excellence covers Continuous integration, Continuous delivery, while Structure talks about Ops and support teams role, and Adoption includes continuous Improvement. To implement DevOps along with LeSS, customization of LeSS concepts are required along with effective correlation of these concepts with DevOps principles. You need to define team and design specific roles to achieve desired benefits.
One needs to demonstrate detailed awareness of DevOps concepts and respective agile framework to achieve best results from IT optimization. Today, optimization of this culture has started talking of “NoOps” wherein IT environment can become automated and abstracted from the underlying infrastructure to such an extent that the team can be better utilized than for just managing software. Many organizations are trying to optimize by rescheduling their day or night Ops. However, Murphy ’s Law still applies and it would do us well to be careful in selecting the right model in solving the specific problem.
Authored by: Milan Kumar, VP/ Global Head – Delivery & CIO, Nihilent Technologies (part of Dimension Data, a NTT group company)
