IT Release Schedules

IT Release Schedules

In organizations that have large IT departments, software releases at the enterprise and individual team levels are very common. It is important to have a logical sequence of releases, in order to make sure that the service being delivered doesn’t fail or get delayed. This article will explain what is release scheduling and how can organizations utilize Plutora for planning release schedules.

IT Release Scheduling Objectives

Release Management is an important component of the Service transition process. It happens at every transitioning stage of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Before any code is to be deployed in live environments or Production, the software modules must go through intermediate steps such as Testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) etc., to ensure that the code is working as expected and meets all the quality metrics defined by upper management & clients.

Scheduling literally means the timelines in week or a month of a particular year when software modules will be deployed in environments. This is very dynamic in nature because of the un-certainties around the development timelines, road blocks, missed milestones etc., Thus, release schedules have to be adjusted based on the many factors at a particular point in time.

Releases can be broadly categorized into Enterprise level and team level releases. Actually, Enterprise release is a superset that holds all the team releases. Release scheduling is a process in which Release Managers co-ordinate with Clients, business users, developers and other experts to understand the software module development lifecycle, road blocks, release requirements and the timelines when the software will be deployed in various environments such as Production, UAT etc.

Efficient release planning will ensure that software releases will be of high quality and reliable. It can also reduce the costs and risks which would otherwise have resulted from release delays, failures, and mis-communication between stakeholders.

IT Release Planning in Plutora

Plutora offers an elegant solution to solve the problems related to Release planning: in traditional settings, Release Managers heavily rely on e-mails to communicate with stakeholders for planning releases. As the team size grows or if the organization has multiple business units and people hierarchy, this method would consume a lot of time and inefficiencies. This eventually results in release delays, failures, and unexpected costs.

Plutora provides the following features for release planning:

1. Plutora has the functionality to design release plans by creating enterprise and standard releases. It also has a good RACI feature for robust accountability.

2. Since it is a Software As A Service (SAAS) product, anybody who has the right privileges can access it from anywhere and see the release schedules and make modifications to it. This not only results in tight collaboration between stakeholders, but also allows the Release Managers to make dynamic changes and report any roadblocks to senior management.

3. It has the functionality to maintain a central database of Systems and Environments information that can be accessed across the organization. In addition to this, it has strict user access controls and accountabilities.

4. Due to the centralized nature of the tool, administration and updates can be extremely simple and easy.

5. Plutora provides a very user friendly dashboard which displays beautiful graphs based on the real time status of releases.

Release Planning is an important process in the Release Management

Release Planning is an important process in the Release Management system and a critical element for ensuring that releases go smoothly. With an automated tool such as Plutora, organizations can derive huge cost savings and good quality releases.