Skip to main content

Relationship of DevOps to Agile, Lean and Continuous Deployment

A Multivocal Literature Review Study

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10027))

Abstract

In recent years, the DevOps phenomenon has attaracted interest amongst practitioners and researchers in software engineering, reflecting the greater emphasis on collaboration between development and IT operations. However, despite this growing interest, DevOps is often conflated with agile and continuous deployment approaches of software development. This study compares DevOps with agile, lean and continuous deployment approaches in software development from four perspectives: origin, adoption, implementation and goals. The study also reports on the claimed effects and on the metrics of DevOps used to asses those effects. The research is based on an interpretative analysis of qualitative data from documents describing DevOps and practitioner’s responses in a DevOps workshop. Our findings indicate that the DevOps phenomenon originated from continuous deployment as an evolution of agile software development, informed by a lean principles background. It was also concluded that successful adoption of DevOps requires agile software development.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For more detail, see [9], pp. 12–13.

  2. 2.

    http://www.n4s.fi/en/.

  3. 3.

    http://www.qsrinternational.com/what-is-nvivo.

  4. 4.

    Link to list of ML: http://tinyurl.com/z3jpu5v.

References

  1. Sharp, H., Robinson, H., Woodman, M.: Software engineering: community and culture. IEEE Softw. 17(1), 40–47 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Humble, J., Farley, D.: Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Dingsøyr, T., Lassenius, C.: Emerging themes in agile software development: Introduction to the special section on continuous value delivery. IST 77, 56–60 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Lwakatare, L.E., Kuvaja, P., Oivo, M.: An exploratory study of DevOps: extending the dimensions of DevOps with practices. In: 11th International Conference on Software Engineering Advances, pp. 91–99. IARIA, Rome (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Penners, R., Dyck, A.: Release engineering vs. DevOps-an approach to define both terms. In: Full-Scale Software Engineering, pp. 49–53 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Humble, J., Molesky, J.: Why enterprises must adopt DevOps to enable continuous delivery. Cutter IT J. 24(8), 6–12 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kerzazi, N., Adams, B.: Who needs release and DevOps engineers, and why? In: International Workshop on Continuous Software Evolution and Delivery, pp. 77–83. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Wikipedia: DevOps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps

  9. Bass, L., Weber, I., Zhu, L.: DevOps: A Software Architect’s Perspective. Addison-Wesley Professional, Old Tappan (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Lwakatare, L.E., Kuvaja, P., Oivo, M.: Dimensions of DevOps. In: Lassenius, C., Dingsøyr, T., Paasivaara, M. (eds.) XP 2015. LNBIP, vol. 212, pp. 212–217. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Ogawa, R., Malen, B.: Towards rigor in reviews of multivocal literatures: applying the exploratory case study method. Rev. Educ. Res. 61(3), 299–305 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Tom, E., Aurum, A., Vidgen, R.: An exploration of technical debt. J. Syst. Softw. 86(6), 1498–1516 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Garousi, V., Mäntylä, M.V.: When and what to automate in software testing? a multi-vocal literature review. IST 76, 92–117 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Braun, V., Clarke, V.: Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualit. Res. Psychol. 3(2), 77–101 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Guerriero, M., Ciavotta, M., Gibilisco, G., Ardagna, D.: A model-driven DevOps framework for QoS-aware cloud applications. In: 17th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing, pp. 345–351. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Virmani, M.: Understanding DevOps & bridging the gap from continuous integration to continuous delivery. In: 5th International Conference on the Innovative Computing Technology, pp. 78–82. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Olszewska, M., Waldén, M.: DevOps meets formal modelling in high-criticality complex systems. In: 1st International Workshop on Quality-Aware DevOps, pp. 7–12. ACM (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Farroha, B., Farroha, D.: A framework for managing mission needs, compliance, and trust in the DevOps environment. In: Military Communications Conference, pp. 288–293. IEEE, October 2014

    Google Scholar 

  19. Schneider, T.: Achieving cloud scalability with microservices and DevOps in the connected car domain. In: CEUR Workshop Proceedings on Continuous Software Engineering, pp. 138–141. CEUR-WS.org (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Walter, J., van Hoorn, A., Koziolek, H., Okanovic, D., Kounev, S.: Asking “What”, automating the “How?”: the vision of declarative performance engineering. In: 7th International Conference on Performance Engineering, pp. 91–94. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Syed, M.H., Fernandez, E.B.: Cloud ecosystems support for internet of things and DevOps using patterns. In: 1st International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation, pp. 301–304. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Borgenholt, G., Begnum, K., Engelstad, P.: Audition: a DevOps-oriented service optimization and testing framework for cloud environments. In: Conference of Norsk Informatik Konferanse, pp. 146–157 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Cukier, D.: DevOps patterns to scale web applications using cloud services. In: Conference on Systems, Programming, & Applications: Software for Humanity, pp. 143–152 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Spinellis, D.: Being a DevOps developer. IEEE Softw. 33(3), 4–5 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Deshpande, A.: DevOps an Extension of Agile Methodology How It will Impact QA? (2016). http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/devops-and-software-testing/

  26. Lwakatare, L.E., Karvonen, T., Sauvola, T., Kuvaja, P., Olsson, H.H., Bosch, J., Oivo, M.: Towards DevOps in the embedded systems domain: why is it so hard? In: 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 5437–5446. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Racspace: Building Your DevOps Engine (2015). http://tinyurl.com/htovgd9

  28. Staples, M., Zhu, L., Grundy, J.: Continuous validation for data analytics systems. In: 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, pp. 769–772. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Cook, N., Milojicic, D., Talwar, V.: Cloud management. J. Internet Serv. Apps. 3(1), 67–75 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Ebert, C., Gallardo, G., Hernantes, J., Serrano, N.: DevOps. IEEE Softw. 33(3), 94–100 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Fitzgerald, B., Stol, K.J.: Continuous software engineering: a roadmap and agenda. J. Syst. Softw., 1–14 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Waller, J., Ehmke, N.C., Hasselbring, W.: Including performance benchmarks into continuous integration to enable DevOps. ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Not. 40(2), 1–4 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Zhu, L., Bass, L., Champlin-Scharff, G.: DevOps and its practices. IEEE Softw. 33(3), 32–34 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Scrum-Alliance: DevOps and Agile: Key Considerations for DevOps and Agile to Coexist for Expedited Delivery (2014). http://tinyurl.com/j9xqxlw

  35. Soni, M.: End to end automation on cloud with build pipeline: the case for DevOps in insurance industry, continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous delivery. In: International Conference on Cloud Computing in Emerging Markets, pp. 85–89. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  36. A Short History of DevOps (2014). http://rewrite.ca.com/us/articles/devops/a-short-history-of-devops.html

  37. Balalaie, A., Heydarnoori, A., Jamshidi, P.: Microservices architecture enables DevOps: migration to a cloud-native architecture. IEEE Softw. 33(3), 42–52 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Claps, G.G., Berntsson Svensson, R., Aurum, A.: On the journey to continuous deployment: technical and social challenges along the way. IST 57, 21–31 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Cois, C.A., Yankel, J., Connell, A.: Modern DevOps: optimizing software development through effective system interactions. In: International Professional Communication Conference, pp. 1–7. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Rodríguez, P., Haghighatkhah, A., Lwakatare, L.E., Teppola, S., Suomalainen, T., Eskeli, J., Karvonen, T., Kuvaja, P., Verner, J.M., Oivo, M.: Continuous deployment of software intensive products and services: a systematic mapping study. J. Syst. Softw. (2016). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121215002812

  41. Wettinger, J., Andrikopoulos, V., Leymann, F.: Automated capturing and systematic usage of DevOps knowledge for cloud applications. In: International Conference on Cloud Engineering, pp. 60–65. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Wettinger, J., Breitenbucher, U., Leymann, F.: Dyn tail - dynamically tailored deployment engines for cloud applications. In: 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing, pp. 421–428. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Wettinger, J., Andrikopoulos, V., Leymann, F.: Enabling DevOps collaboration and continuous delivery using diverse application environments. In: OTM 2015. LNCS, vol. 9415, pp. 348–358. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Wettinger, J., Breitenbücher, U., Kopp, O., Leymann, F.: Streamlining DevOps automation for cloud applications using TOSCA as standardized metamodel. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 56, 317–332 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Axelsson, J.: Architectural allocation alternatives and associated concerns in cyber-physical systems. In: The European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops, pp. 1–6. ACM (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Callanan, M., Spillane, A.: DevOps: making it easy to do the right thing. IEEE Softw. 33(3), 53–59 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Rong, G., Zhang, H., Shao, D.: CMMI guided process improvement for DevOps projects. In: International Workshop on Software and Systems Process, pp. 76–85. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Sun, D., Fu, M., Zhu, L., Li, G., Lu, Q.: Non-intrusive anomaly detection with streaming performance metrics and logs for DevOps in public clouds: a case study in AWS. Trans. Emerg. Topics Comp. 4(2), 278–289 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Weber, I., Nepal, S., Zhu, L.: Developing dependable and secure cloud applications. IEEE Int. Comp. 20(3), 74–79 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Coté: DevOps, You Keep Using That Word What Is DevOps? A Discussion And History (2015). https://blog.pivotal.io/podcasts-pivotal/features/devops-you-keep-using-that-word-what-is-devops-a-discussion-and-history

  51. Liu, Y., Li, C., Liu, W.: Integrated solution for timely delivery of customer change requests: a case study of using DevOps approach. Int. J. U- & E-Serv., Sci. & Tech. 7(2), 41–50 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  52. IT-Revolution: DevOps Culture (2012). http://itrevolution.com/devops-culture-part-1/

  53. Swift-Kanban: Kanban for DevOps/Continuous Delivery (2016). http://tinyurl.com/gpvra3r

  54. Cho, J., Trent, A.: Validity in qualitative research revisited. Qualit. Res. 6(3), 319–340 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by TEKES as part of the N4S project of DIMECC (Digital, Internet, Materials and Engineering Co-Creation).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucy Ellen Lwakatare .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Lwakatare, L.E., Kuvaja, P., Oivo, M. (2016). Relationship of DevOps to Agile, Lean and Continuous Deployment. In: Abrahamsson, P., Jedlitschka, A., Nguyen Duc, A., Felderer, M., Amasaki, S., Mikkonen, T. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10027. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_27

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49093-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49094-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics