From Waterfall to Agile to DevOps – A Cultural and Technological Shift

‘Change is the only constant’ – a known and proven fact, be it any periphery in life. And, IT is one of the foremost industries proving this theory. With numerous technologies paving their way forward, each and every aspect of IT undergoes a change with the blink of an eye. You see tremendous changes and innovations each time you move around to look for something in IT. Whatever role you play, you find advancements your way, the moment you start off any venture.

Project Management has been the fundamental block of any IT venture. With a sure shot plan in place, it manages the entire project with the usage of various tools and project execution methodologies. With the involvement of certain basic processes like initiation, planning & design, execution, monitoring & controlling and implementation its way, each and every IT project has to follow a particular project execution methodology in order to reach a successful and happy project closure. Co-ordination between the varied resources and a seamless integration of the different activities in the project are the prime ingredients in any project execution methodology.

Project Execution Methodologies Waterfall, Agile and DevOps– Rising a Step Further

• Waterfall Approach

As we see through the flown years, the most in-demand approach to project management was the Waterfall approach. It, being a linear and sequential approach, had separately set goals for each defined phase of the project. The entire process of software development was divided into distinct processes, each having its own beginning and end and all of them cascaded to each other in a linear fashion. The latter had its start once the former was achieved and completed. It looked like an ideal methodology at that time and did wonders for years to come. But with the complexities and variations of the IT world on a rising spree, there was a requirement for a change in the typical approach.

• Agile Development Approach

By the late 1990s, there arose a need for a change that did not just look at the entire software process one after the other but intermingled the processes in such a way that it was never too late to attend to any error. It was time to move on for a methodology which not only managed this change but provided a far-sighted approach to project execution. The Agile software methodology is a sort of Incremental model in which the software is developed, tested and implemented in incremental and rapid cycles. The results are in terms of incremental releases with each release depending upon the previous release’s operations and success ratio. This works out very well in cases of time critical solutions and does its maximum to ensure most of the errors and loopholes are covered up before the project actually goes live.

But over a period of time, what followed was that the development teams presumed certain facts that failed to improvise on productivity and they, mistakenly, started getting involved in micro activities like planning, testing, integration etc. The other way, the operations team was way behind with deployments coming over them with no fixed schedules and releases left haywire. This huge gap that got created between the development and operations team gave rise to a new-age version of agile – DevOps.

• DevOps Approach

Considered to be the most modern approach and creating a buzz in the IT world today, ‘DevOps’ weaves its entire approach around bridging the gap between the Development and Operations teams. With the IT world becoming a smaller place to reach with widening arms to reach anywhere under the sun, DevOps Solutions has become an essential ingredient for the success of any application to effectively and efficiently converge the needs of the development and operation teams so as to ensure a completely reliable and secure end product, with as many possible errors to be encountered early.

It appears similar to the Agile approach but has its own added benefits:

• Swifter time to market
• Ensured stability and less risk of failures post-deployment
• Quicker recovery time after unforeseen circumstances
• Enhanced efficiency and productivity
• Increased scalability and robustness of processes

Though the Agile and DevOps approach shares a similar line of thought, DevOps offers a seamless synchronization between the two teams to ensure a fast-paced and error-free development and deployment. The major objective of this approach is to reduce the gap between the Dev and Ops teams by increasing team interactions and value-based feedbacks to improvise on customer satisfaction and service quality.

Time will show how DevOps also has its own set of challenges but as of now, it has emerged as a hot selling cake in the industry. With technologies like Continuous Integration, Continuous Development and tools like Jenkins, Puppet, Chef and many more supporting this innovative project execution methodology, DevOps is the call for today.

Keeping pace with the fast emerging trends, we @ SPEC INDIA, have exhaustive experience in the above-mentioned project execution methodologies in a multitude of projects and have gained a good amount of customer satisfaction and trust during execution of the projects.