DEVOPSdigest

Earlier this year, DEVOPSdigest featured a list of expert opinions on the essential steps to become agile, featuring insight from DevOps experts across the industry. According to our experts, Agile takes a commitment across the entire Software Development Lifecycle, plus the right tools and the right culture.

Now that we have an idea on how to achieve agility, however, we have to consider why. What's the payoff? With this question in mind, DEVOPSdigest asked the experts — including analysts, consultants and vendors — for their opinions on what are the most important advantages of being Agile.

Many of the advantages on the list overlap. Some of the advantages deliver other advantages. As with any list like this, the value is in gaining a wide variety of perspectives so that we can intensively explore the real questions: Why bother to become agile? Why go through all the effort?

"Agile" is not just a buzz word. One of the most talked about concepts in the DevOps world, Agile can easily be mistaken for a talking point. But this list sets out to prove that Agile is very real and delivers tangible, valuable benefits. As you will see in this expansive list — which will be posted in 5 parts over the next 2 weeks — Agile clearly pays off in many ways. How these advantages would impact your organization is something you will have to carefully consider. But the experts provide a deep look into the various levels of benefits agility can bring to the development team, IT Ops, DevOps, and ultimately the entire business and its customers. In today's digital economy, Agile can have a wide-ranging impact on how an organization does business, and how well that organization succeeds.

Part 1 looks at how Agile supports DevOps and breaking down silos in the organization.

EMBRACE DEVOPS

Simply put, the greatest benefit of getting Agile as it relates to DevOps is that you can truly embrace the process; you can be Agile without engaging DevOps, but not vice versa. That said, it really doesn't make sense to pursue either methodology alone as the combined benefits are so dramatic, and real-world practitioners recognize this. A recent survey conducted by Coleman Parkes found that advanced adopters of both models grew new business by 63%, improved operational efficiency by 41% and boosted NPS by 29%. Those numbers speak for themselves.
Aruna Ravichandran
VP of DevOps Solution Marketing and Management, CA Technologies(link is external)

BREAK DOWN BARRIERS

Fundamental to DevOps is the on-going collaboration of Development and Operations Teams throughout a project lifecycle from concept to production and beyond. A primary advantage of adopting an agile approach is enabling a more effective and productive connection between DevOps and the business, breaking down organizational boundaries to help facilitate the culture shift needed for DevOps to deliver tangible, long-term value.
Kris Saxton
Founding Partner, Automation Logic(link is external)

Kris Saxton was a speaker at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017 (DOES17) London. Don't miss the next summit: DOES17 San Francisco(link is external), November 13-15, 2017.

ALIGN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AND R&D

In product development organizations, the top advantage of being agile is the better alignment between product management and R&D. The agile process enforces synchronization of the activities between product managers, product owners and engineering — not just on the top-level feature requirement, but also on number of levels/details down. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that being agile is not a silver bullet, as organizations, especially larger and distributed ones, have significant challenges in their implementation.
Goran Garevski
VP of Engineering, Comtrade Software(link is external)

ALIGN DEVELOPERS AND BUSINESS

Agility in IT and dev teams allows enterprises to respond quickly to market demands and meet their customer needs better. It also empowers developers to align themselves with the business and deliver code that is a better fit for customer needs.
Chris Brandon
CEO and Founder, StorageOS(link is external)

BUILD TRUST

Agile at its core humanizes the IT department in new ways. Although measurable gains in efficiency, cycle time, and quality are clear and important benefits, the real revolution of Agile (and the wellspring of its success) is that it has established a framework for conversation and innovation wherein people are discovering the incredible results that can come from learning to understand, respect, and trust each other more openly.
Jason J. Lenny
Technical Product Director, XebiaLabs(link is external)

Go to The Top Advantages of Being Agile - Part 2, showing how Agile delivers speed.