Agile for DevOps & DevSecOps Engineers | Scrum, Kanban & Lean

Abdulrahman AhmadAbdulrahman Ahmad
4 min read

A Practical Storytelling Guide to Scrum, Kanban, and Lean

🎯 Target Audience: DevOps & DevSecOps beginners
🧠 Key Concepts: Agile Manifesto, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, CI/CD integration
⏱ Estimated Read Time: 10–12 minutes
🌍 Real-World Focus: How Agile drives DevOps culture, automation, and security
🙏 Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Omar Higgy, whose session deepened my understanding and reminded me how powerful it is to learn from great teachers.

🌟 A Note of Gratitude

Before diving in, I want to pause.
Learning Agile again, but this time through Omar Higgy’s session, hit differently. Omar didn’t just explain Agile, he made it alive, relatable, and practical for DevOps engineers like me.

I’ve always believed: “The best teachers don’t just give you knowledge, they light a fire in you.”
And honestly, I feel proud and thankful to have learned something new from him.

So this article isn’t just a guide, it’s also my way of saying thank you 🙏.

🧩 Why Agile Matters for DevOps & DevSecOps

Agile isn’t just for software developers. For DevOps engineers, Agile is the mindset behind automation, CI/CD pipelines, security integration, and faster delivery.

  • Scrum gives us sprints, retrospectives, and planning that map beautifully to release cycles.

  • Kanban mirrors how we visualize CI/CD pipelines and manage work in flow.

  • Lean forces us to cut waste, whether it’s manual steps, insecure configs, or unused tools.

Agile is the bridge between people and technology.

📜 The Agile Manifesto (2001)

Agile is grounded in 4 values:

  1. Individuals & Interactions > Processes & Tools

  2. Working Software > Comprehensive Documentation

  3. Customer Collaboration > Contract Negotiation

  4. Responding to Change > Following a Plan

For DevOps engineers, these values translate into:

  • Automating for people, not just processes.

  • Prioritizing working CI/CD pipelines over perfect docs.

  • Partnering with security teams (DevSecOps) instead of just waiting for audits.

  • Pivoting when requirements or incidents demand it.

⚙️ Frameworks in Action

Scrum 🏉

  • Sprints = delivery cycles.

  • Daily standups = sync points (just like monitoring dashboards).

  • Retrospectives = blameless postmortems in SRE/DevOps.

DevOps Example: Plan sprint goals around infrastructure changes (e.g., Kubernetes upgrade).

Kanban 🗂

  • Work visualized on a board (columns: To Do → In Progress → Done).

  • WIP limits prevent overloading pipelines.

  • Flow encourages small, continuous changes.

DevOps Example: Map CI/CD tasks as cards (Build → Test → Deploy → Secure).

Lean ⚡

  • Focus = value to customer + waste elimination.

  • Remove manual approvals that slow down safe deployments.

  • Deliver the MVP infrastructure first (e.g., monitoring before optimization).

DevOps Example: Automating security scanning in the pipeline to remove manual, repetitive reviews.

🧑‍💻 Real-Life Example: E-commerce Deployment

Imagine a team tasked with launching a new e-commerce app.
Instead of Waterfall, they apply Agile + DevOps:

  • Scrum: Break tasks into sprints → 1st sprint = core checkout, 2nd = user auth.

  • Kanban: Use a CI/CD Kanban board to track feature deployments.

  • Lean: Automate logging & monitoring early → eliminate wasted debugging hours later.

Result: Faster delivery, secure pipelines, and feedback-driven releases.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls (Agile Anti-Patterns)

  • 🚫 Skipping retrospectives (no continuous improvement).

  • 🚫 Estimation inflation (teams gaming velocity).

  • 🚫 Ceremony overload (rituals > outcomes).

  • 🚫 Ignoring metrics (no data-driven improvement).

📚 Recap

✅ Agile is a mindset, not just a framework.
✅ Scrum → great for structured sprints.
✅ Kanban → best for continuous flow.
✅ Lean → perfect for removing waste.
✅ DevOps + Agile = automation, speed, and collaboration.

🚀 Call to Action

If you’re starting out in DevOps/DevSecOps, don’t just learn tools. learn the Agile mindset.
It’s what will help you:

  • Ship faster.

  • Stay secure.

  • Keep improving.

💬 What Agile practice has helped you the most in your workflows? Drop it in the comments!

👨‍💻 Written by: Abdulrahman A. Muhamad
🙏 Special thanks to Omar Higgy for inspiring this renewed understanding of Agile.
🌐 LinkedIn | GitHub | Portfolio

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agile for beginnersagileScrumkanbanleanDevopsDevSecOpsci-cdautomationCollaboration

Written by

Abdulrahman Ahmad
Abdulrahman Ahmad

🚀 Code. Automate. Innovate. Hi, I’m Abdulrahman, a passionate DevOps Engineer and Software Developer on a mission to bridge the gap between code and production. With a love for automation, cloud-native solutions, and cutting-edge tech, I turn complex problems into seamless, scalable systems. 💡 What I Do: Build robust CI/CD pipelines that deliver software at the speed of thought. Architect cloud infrastructure that scales with a single command. Transform manual processes into automated workflows that just work. Break down silos and foster collaboration between teams. 🔧 Tech Stack I ❤️: Containers (Docker), Orchestration (Kubernetes), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab), Cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure), and scripting like it’s my superpower. 📝 Why This Blog? This is where I share my journey, lessons learned, and the latest trends in DevOps and software engineering. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, join me as we explore the tools, tricks, and best practices that make the tech world tick. 🌟 Let’s Build the Future, One Pipeline at a Time. Connect with me, share your thoughts, and let’s automate the world together!