Difference between CI/CD, Agile and DevOps

CI/CD, Agile and DevOps are very commonly used terms in software development and testing. To understand the difference between them, start with what these terms mean.

CI/CD

CI/CD refers to practices for software engineering and deployment.

CI or Continuous Integration is an engineering practice in which members of a development team integrate their code at a very high frequency. Teams implementing CI aim to integrate code daily or, in some cases, even hourly. CI creates a software-defined lifecycle that decreases the effort required for build and integration.

CD or Continuous Delivery means that all changes to code — new features, bug fixes, experiments, configuration changes — are always ready for deployment to a production environment. CD makes deployments routine events that can occur at any moment on demand.

CD can also mean

Agile

In software development, agile refers to a set of frameworks and practices that follow the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. It seeks to facilitate faster delivery times through collaboration, iterative feedback cycles that focus on specific processes and tools. Agile development focuses on collaboration and self-organization. Teams create solutions together and are cross-functional. There is no watertight division between teams.

DevOps

DevOps primarily refers to a mindset that focuses on communication and collaboration between developers and testers. This was necessary because, in non-DevOps setups, devs are often unaware of QA and Ops roadblocks ( “It works fine on my machine”). Moreover, QAs and Ops personnel often lack context on the business requirement of any software since they work across multiple projects. The point of DevOps is to ensure that developers and QAs are on the same page at all stages of a project.

Differences between CI/CD, Agile and DevOps

• Agile encompasses the other two practices. It is a philosophy of software development implemented in various methodologies.
• DevOps is an agile development practice that uses agile principles (collaboration, communication to streamline software building, testing, and release.
• CI/CD is a DevOps tactic, using automated testing tools to implement agile development.

All three practices create better software in lesser time. There is no watertight difference between them since these practices overlap almost all the time. Any developer/QA/Ops who uses one practice will inevitably use the others.

To build a CI/CD and DevOps empowered testing pipeline, use a real device cloud for testing. Ensure that it enables test automation on real browsers and devices. Additionally, BrowserStack check that it integrations with major CI/CD tools, simplifying testing protocols for QAs and developers.