This article summarizes findings reported by TechTarget and ADTmag based on the GitLab Inc. 2018 Global Developer Report. Statistics and graphics originate from that survey.
Background: GitLab’s 2018 Global Developer Report
GitLab Inc.—the company behind the open-source GitLab platform—published its 2018 Global Developer Report based on a survey collected over one month in late 2017. GitLab solicited responses through its social media channels and newsletter, covering a wide range of topics relevant to modern software development teams, including a direct comparison of Agile and DevOps methodologies.
GitLab Community Edition is a widely used open-source software development platform that includes built-in version control, issue tracking, code review, and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) capabilities. Its user base makes it a reasonable sample for surveying developer practices across both Agile and DevOps-oriented organizations.
Agile vs. DevOps: Complementary, Not Competing
A common misconception is that Agile and DevOps are opposing methodologies. In practice, most practitioners treat them as complementary. One way to frame the relationship: DevOps extends Agile principles beyond the development team to include systems, infrastructure, and operations. Where an Agile team typically consists of developers, testers, and designers working in cross-functional sprints, a DevOps team expands that definition to explicitly include operations.
The GitLab report examined how organizations self-identifying as Agile or DevOps practitioners differ in concrete behaviors—particularly around deployment frequency and automation.
Key Finding: DevOps Teams Prioritize Automation More
The report’s headline comparison finding was:
“Organizations that have adopted DevOps are more likely to deploy on demand and prioritize automation than those practicing Agile.”
GitLab Inc., 2018 Global Developer Report
This was backed by a concrete data point from the survey:
- 71% of DevOps practitioners agreed that automation is a high priority.
- 60% of Agile practitioners said the same.
An 11-percentage-point gap suggests that while Agile teams value automation, it is more deeply embedded as a cultural and operational priority within DevOps-oriented teams—consistent with DevOps’s emphasis on CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and automated testing.
Deployment Frequency: DevOps vs. Agile
GitLab also asked respondents how frequently their organizations deploy code, then segmented responses by methodology. The survey data (illustrated in the original report’s graphics, sourced from GitLab Inc.) showed that DevOps teams were more likely to deploy on demand or multiple times per day, while Agile teams more commonly deployed on a sprint or release schedule.
Note: The original images linked from ADTmag are no longer reliably accessible. Readers are encouraged to consult the GitLab 2018 Global Developer Report directly for the full charts.
Tooling: More Similarities Than Differences
When the report compared the top three tools cited as essential by each group, it found only one difference between the Agile and DevOps tool lists. This overlap reinforces the view that the two approaches share a common technical foundation—the distinction lies more in culture, scope, and process than in the toolchain itself.
The specific tools identified in the survey graphics are not reproduced here as the source images are no longer available. The original report should be consulted for the full breakdown.
Other Key Findings from the Report
Beyond the Agile vs. DevOps comparison, GitLab highlighted several additional findings worth noting for engineering leaders and DevOps practitioners:
- Manager vs. developer perception gap: Managers reported more optimistic views of team satisfaction, productivity, and the value of open-source tools than individual contributors did.
- Collaboration is valued but visibility lags: While 81% of respondents said it was easy to collaborate within their organization, 42% of developers cited unclear direction as their top obstacle to getting work done—pointing to a transparency gap despite good collaborative intent.
- High-performing teams have better tooling: Top-performing teams were more likely to have access to better tools, spend less time context-switching between tasks, and work remotely compared to lower-performing teams.
- Remote teams report higher satisfaction: Fully remote team members reported higher overall satisfaction levels than in-office counterparts, including better visibility into the deployment process and stronger DevOps culture.
- CI/CD is the top investment priority: IT leaders identified continuous integration, delivery, and deployment as the area they planned to invest in most during 2018, with selecting the right technology cited as their greatest challenge.
Survey Methodology Considerations
The GitLab survey was conducted over one month in the fall of 2017, with respondents recruited via GitLab’s own social media channels and newsletter. This means the sample skews toward GitLab users and followers, who may already have stronger CI/CD and DevOps orientations than the broader developer population. Results should be interpreted with that self-selection bias in mind.
Takeaways for DevOps Practitioners
The GitLab 2018 report provides a useful data point for teams evaluating their own practices:
- If your team practices Agile but deployment frequency remains low, automation investment is likely the lever to pull.
- The tooling overlap between Agile and DevOps teams suggests that adopting DevOps does not require a wholesale tool replacement—cultural and process shifts matter more.
- Visibility and direction clarity remain unsolved problems even in collaborative teams; tooling alone does not fix communication gaps.
- Remote work and DevOps culture appear positively correlated in this dataset, though causation should not be assumed.
Original reporting via TechTarget. Survey data sourced from GitLab Inc.’s 2018 Global Developer Report.