Agile, DevOps and the IT

As the IT industry has always been striving to find a perfect way of working between tools, people and processes, various methodologies have come up to match the expectations and achieve the optimum output. Also, it was seen that the demands of the market rose and were quite unstable. In this process, many came together to develop a solution for these rising challenges. And in that need, Agile methodology came into existence. It was tested to give a working material with less time to market unlike waterfall which took a lot of time to develop and present the output at the end with quite less or no scope of implementing feedbacks.

#The Agile Scrum Methodology

 The Agile scrum methodology which is now a de facto standard for organizations and is one of it's kind. The inclination towards the agile scrum methodology over de jure waterfall is supported by valid reasons. The benefits, of course, comprise agility, less time to market, constant feedback and improvisations. Working in sprints give you a positive constraint which helps you plan out things small and better. It has time-boxed events to execute the sprint plan and has events for constant review of your own work. 

#DevOps

DevOps, with all the swagger it has in its name, is balanced mix of development stream and operations stream. And as it suggests, DevOps personnel are skilled enough to defend the fort in both areas. But it differs from Agile scrum as is it only a perception or mindset to strategize the way of working which scrum or any other agile methodology for that matter, provides. It is being used in the organizations which encourage cross skilling in the teams

DevOps is a frequently used term when it comes to increasing productivity of and between the teams in orgranizations and thus has many benefits to reap. 

#Agile Scrum vs DevOps

But there is a very thin line between these things that many people fail to understand. Agile is a way of working which organizations adopt. The general meaning of agile is to quickly adapt to new things or surroundings which is very important for the effectiveness and efficiency of services offered by a service provider. Looking out now, agile is turning out to be a new metrics in finding out the value of services. But in contrast, DevOps is a perception/ mindset towards the working. It is "how should we distribute the roles to achieve maximum output in the same constraints."

There are always two faces to a coin. All these terms sound exciting but if not realized well, can be disastrous. To zoom out to the bigger picture, being a single agile team working with non agile teams in an organization does not help. It takes away the valuable portion of your time leaving you with nothing to do or nothing you could do. Also DevOps can have challenges spreading administration roles in the team(s).

I understand the challenge of an organization working with different service providers and vendors having their own processes and agreements. But the value would be many folds if each entity in this relationship works the same.

Let me know your thoughts or experiences on this.