Customer Spotlight: Senior IT Manager at Leading Technology Company

Senior IT Manager at a leading Texas-based technology company talks about the challenges her release management team was facing and how Plutora has helped solve them.

The senior IT manager is responsible for fiscal year strategy planning, enforcing organizational standards to ensure quality, communicating issues and their recommended solutions to leadership, overseeing the enterprise release function, and growing strong leaders in the organization.

I sat down with her to ask her a bunch of questions about life as an IT Manager at one of the world’s most well-known and respected companies, and how Plutora has helped her team improve enterprise software delivery.

What challenges was your company facing that prompted the search for a solution?

“We were managing releases across the company manually, which was impeding scalability. We were also struggling with communicating insights to leadership, including the CIO. Our release management processes were inconsistent and error-prone. It was critical for us to get a tool that would give us end-to-end visibility and cast off manual effort.”

Why did you choose Plutora?

“We evaluated several tools. Plutora was clearly a winner with its comprehensive suite of products and functionality. Plutora helped us eliminate manual processes by standardizing our enterprise release function. It gave us a clear line of sight from concept to production. It also gave us rich analytics and reporting that we could easily roll up to leadership.”

Is there anything that surprised you during the process?

“I underestimated the culture at my company. I was excited about bringing in a tool that would help us revamp release management. I was expecting easy and natural adoption but I faced resistance. I had to work on the middle management layer. I allayed their concerns by convincing IT partners that Plutora would have immense value for them. Plutora has lived up to its promises and today everyone is happy with the tool.”

Which tasks was the company responsible for during implementation?

“We were responsible for ensuring our process was defined. We did struggle with figuring out precisely what we required from the tool. For instance, we spent a lot of time on the activities tab and even went overboard with gates and phases. To smooth out the process I recommended that teams get a POC to determine their needs.”

How has Plutora performed against your expectations?

“Any time you get a tool, you tend to hope that it solves problems out-of-the-box. Plutora solved most of our problems immediately. Then as we matured and started using Plutora as our primary release management tool, we discovered there were more things we’d need.We have engaged in open and honest communication with Plutora since day one. Whenever we request customization – like we have for reporting – Plutora dedicates resources to deliver the functionality. I’m glad to say that Plutora has always lived up to our expectations.”

Which products are you using?

“We are using Plutora Release and Plutora Environments.”

How extensive are your reporting requirements?

“The canned reports in Plutora are solid but they’re specific to a module. Cross-module reports would be even better.”

How much time do you save with Plutora?

“It used to take us an entire day to gather reports to share with leadership and the CIO. With Plutora, they can just log in to the tool and get rich and contextual insights.”

What do you like most about Plutora?

“My favorite is the Systems Impact Matrix. At a glance, it helps me understand the risk of complex releases with a heat map of systems impacted by each release. Plutora gives us a standardized process as well as built-in analytics. We’re waiting for the command center to come out. I think it would take Plutora Release to the next level. On the support side, our company has a strong partnership with Plutora. Customer support and Plutora leadership are always there to help us whenever we run into issues.”

What do you dislike most about Plutora?

“Nothing that didn’t get fixed! We had some issues with performance in the beginning. Our company has employees in India who sometimes faced latency issues or anomalies in deployment because they don’t have a local data center. But Dalibor (Plutora CEO) was always on top of things and got those problems resolved right away.”

What significant benefits have you realized since implementing Plutora?

“The biggest benefit is having a single repository for all enterprise releases. It’s great that leadership can get instant access to any information they need without having to email me or set up a meeting. The tool has enhanced collaboration between teams. Every team gets real-time visibility into which systems it’s touching and what their status is. We’ve significantly improved efficiency, and as a result, release velocity.”

How responsive is Plutora to issues? What is the quality of support?

“Plutora doesn’t just talk about its customer-centricity. It walks the talk. Plutora customer support is ultra-responsive and helpful. I can call an account representative or even the CEO. For Plutora, the customer always comes first. “

On a scale of 1 to 10, how strongly would you recommend Plutora to your peers?

“10.”