Can Devops and Scaled Agile Models Coexist?

DevOps, is a perfect blend of Software DEVelopment and Information Technology OPerationS. This term is used to refer to a set of practices that highlights the collaboration and conveyance of both software developers and Information Technology people, while automating the software delivery process and performing changes in infrastructure. The aim behind DevOps is to provide the environment which can help in coding, testing and deploying the software, rapidly and more reliably.

Agile and DevOps are similar concepts. Agile represents some changes in imagining and practicing what is best for organizational change, whereas DevOps places more importance on implementing the organizational changes to perceive its goals. Due to the increasing popularity of the Agile Software Development, the need to introduce DevOps has escalated. This has led to a cooperation in software delivery, as there are increased number of releases.

If DevOps practices are adopting the Agile methodology, it will contribute to an increased organizational profit. Ultimately, it will be beneficial if Agile and DevOps go hand in hand, to maximize the outcome for the organization. However, everyone should be aware of the fact that the software is being created first and ranked by the developers. The success of the implementation of this software depends entirely on the use of the software.

Let’s have a look on some well-known models:

SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework)

Scaled Agile Framework is the Agile Software Framework, designed by Scaled Agile, Inc. It consists of a knowledge base of combined patterns, which forms the Enterprise-Scale and Lean-Agile development. SAFe® aims at the collaboration of both software and systems development and delivery, for increased number of Agile teams. SAFe® is mainly about helping the customers to solve their most challenging scaling problems. SAFe® uses 3 primary bodies to maximize the advantage. These are: Agile development, Lean product development, and systems thinking. You can say that there are two aspects of SAFe® are: the DevOps team and the System team. The System team is more centered around the development side activities like Continuous Integration and test automation, while  the DevOps team focuses on the features which will be useful for deployment and the automation of the process.

DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery):

The focus of DAD is more on the processes. DAD is the decision framework process that enables decisions on incremental and iterative solution delivery. DAD has been known as the “movement beyond the scrum”, which is described in the book written by Scott Ambler and Mark Lines. The DAD framework provides a mechanism to construct smoothly working of IT processes and helps in Scaling.

LESS (Large Scale Scrum):

In LESS, DevOps is not called in the detailed manner, but it is covered by Technical Excellence. Technical Excellence is the way of  making changes to the product in a simple, rapid and flexible way, also called Technical Agility. LESS has a ‘less’ focus on explicitly describing how to use the process and at what time.  So, it is upto you to assign the work at the right time to the right person.

It is therefore highly recommendable that the organizations use the combination  of ‘Explicit Structure of SAFe® principles’ and the ‘ideas of LESS’ to create a framework. This will definitely create more profit in your Organizations.