It’s that time again as Jenkins World is upon us. I love that the conference is being renamed to DevOps World as it spotlights a key aspect – this conference now covers a much wider area than discussions about an open source continuous integration server. What Brings Us Together? I studied electrical engineering in school […]
September 11th, 2018 | Published in DevOps, IT Governance, Release Management
If you live in the United Kingdom, Ireland or in the eastern United States, there is a good chance that your electricity is provided by Centrica or one of its subsidiaries. With 27,000,000 customers, they are in the top 100 utility companies in the United Kingdom. This means Centrica covers a lot of territory and […]
September 10th, 2018 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management, Test Environment Management
A few years back, a large mortgage company was struggling. Their mortgage application process was taking an average of more than three weeks to come to an approval decision. Their customers were growing more and more frustrated. Many were simply leaving and going to competitors. The application approval process passed through a dozen teams and […]
September 7th, 2018 | Published in DevOps, Release Management, Test Environment Management, Value Stream Management
The past few weeks have been filled with recognition and accolades for the Plutora team and the hard work they have put in to developing the platform. From being awarded a top three vendor designation in the EMA DevOps 2020 for release management, to our inclusion in the Forrester New Wave Report for value stream […]
August 15th, 2018 | Published in Release Management
The Future is Software Software is the competitive differentiator driving every business, in every sector, in one way or another. Every enterprise must evolve its software development and delivery processes in order to compete in this new world, or face the prospect of being disrupted. With this shift in focus, comes challenges of accelerating software […]
August 9th, 2018 | Published in Agile Release Management, DevOps, Release Management, Value Stream Management
Today we are happy to announce that Plutora has earned the EMA DevOps Top 3 Award for Release Management. Full findings and details are available in the recently delivered EMA DevOps 2020 report. What is the DevOps 2020 report? Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) provide empirical research about the current state of DevOps adoption, perceptions and […]
July 30th, 2018 | Published in DevOps, Release Management
Tracking the requirements for each sprint, release and project can be difficult especially in fast paced development environments. Depending on the organization, application and adopted methodology, each release can have a wide range of requirements. Some projects may only have a handful of requirements, while other projects could have requirements numbering in the hundreds. Several […]
June 17th, 2018 | Published in Release Management, Test management
Given the scale and complexity of enterprise applications, trying to improve release cycle time without compromising quality is a constant concern. In tightly-coupled architectures, release pipelines have multiple system dependencies which adds to the complexity of maintaining quality while managing the increased velocity of change. An effective release process requires close collaboration across all teams, […]
March 14th, 2018 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
It seems there are never-ending stories about how various development teams have implemented really impressive Agile or DevOps processes that take developed code from the idea state clear through to production in a matter of days, or even hours. These model development teams utilize a wide variety of tools to automate various time-sucking and labor-intensive […]
January 30th, 2018 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
The challenge that every business constantly faces is how to remain relevant to its customers. In a world where changes are happening around us at breakneck speeds, the tools we create and support as development teams need to be cycled faster and more efficiently than ever before. While there are still some legacy applications that […]
January 29th, 2018 | Published in DevOps, Release Management
Amit Bali, Release and Configuration Management Lead at eBay, discusses the challenges that drew his team to Plutora, the implementation process, and the advantages of making the change. Amit Bali is a Release and Configuration Management Lead at eBay. He is responsible for coordinating application releases, their schedules, and the test environments utilized in the […]
November 21st, 2017 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
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, […]
August 23rd, 2017 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
Enterprise Release Manager is a new role in the enterprise. It has become critical as enterprises continue to report larger portfolios with an increased number of smaller, more independent projects. At the same time, more companies are decentralizing deployment and release responsibilities to individual development teams. With more projects releasing software to production more frequently […]
July 10th, 2017 | Published in Release Management
While the DevOps movement and associated technologies have garnered much attention and fanfare, few have addressed the core issue—the handoff from development to operations. This blog post explains why Release Management is the bridge between development and operations, and how you can strengthen that bridge with the right approach, tools, teams, and processes. The Chasm […]
June 26th, 2017 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management
Business is demanding better, faster delivery of value from IT so it can compete in a market that’s moving at breakneck speed. How can IT accelerate business outcomes if it’s taking nine months to complete projects? First and most important, align IT teams with business goals: acquire new customers, retain current customers, and boost revenue. […]
April 28th, 2017 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management
“The core idea of Lean is to maximize customer value.” Lean Enterprise Institute What is Lean? Businesses are being driven up against the wall by continual industry disruption. Many are fighting back by adopting Lean as a means to support business transformation. The aim is simple: create more value for customers with fewer resources. Lean […]
April 12th, 2017 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management
Rising costs. Delays. Failed deployments. Outages. Your risk is increasing and you’re scrambling to figure out why. The trigger is a lack of visibility. And it is the single biggest reason your release risk is going up for dev, for ops, and for the business.
March 15th, 2017 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management
If you want to meet your commitments to the business, you need to improve testing predictability and forecast accuracy. From status quo review to the measurement of metrics, the ten steps outlined in this guide will help you implement watertight releases and achieve your goals.
March 15th, 2017 | Published in Release Management
Are project intake management and portfolio prioritization draining your resources? Are you sick of sorting through project updates and sharing slides? Are you spending endless hours in release meetings with no clear decisions? You probably reminisce the good old days when one team of developers wrote the code, ran a couple of quick test cycles, […]
March 2nd, 2017 | Published in Release Management
Your calendar is filled with release reviews, but it’s looking busy and not exactly doing much. Every time you glance at it, you cringe. You promise yourself you would free up some time so you can actually get stuff done. But you never get around to doing that because you don’t know where to start […]
March 2nd, 2017 | Published in Agile Release Management, Release Management
Plutora Release Manager, the industry-leading platform, has received a vote of confidence from the release management community, with the announcement of Electric Cloud’s Top 20 Vendors in Release Management. Release Management Professionals Agree Electric Cloud operates the Release Management Wiki, the industry’s largest compilation of release management articles and resources sourced from around the web. […]
January 31st, 2017 | Published in Release Management
Service management implies IT Service Management or ITSM while release management is a whole different set of roles and responsibilities and it is a term that is geared more toward a development-driven IT organization. Some organizations take an ITSM approach to release management, but many organizations are starting to decouple traditional ITSM from more agile […]
October 24th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
A release is a highly orchestrated set of changes performed on a complex system, and, as with any change to a software system, it can introduce risks to availability and system stability. These risks are offset by the rewards of shipping updated software to customers, but you should view every release event as a trade-off […]
October 10th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Instead of adopting cookie-cutter solutions for release management based on static, flowchart-driven models, enterprises need purpose-built systems designed with a model that can be adapted to the needs of an individual enterprise that incorporate components from emerging DevOps-focused approaches to release management and more standard ITSM-focused approaches to IT Service Management. Your developers have their […]
September 14th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
The rate of digital disruption is victimizing Fortune 500 companies in a way that has led to 52% of members of the list from 2000 to disappear due to mergers, acquisitions or bankruptcy. No Fortune 500 company wants to become the next Kodak, which was ranked 153rd on the list in 2005 until the age […]
September 2nd, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Everyone has a DevOps initiative – everyone. No matter what size our client or prospective customer the term “DevOps” comes into the conversation whenever we ask someone to describe current initiatives and challenges. Most are trying transform an existing organization to take advantage of DevOps practices such as continuous delivery and deployment automation. The challenge […]
July 13th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
A deployment manager on the largest of projects is a project manager who assumes responsibility for managing deployment playbooks and making sure that the sequence of event during a release process are run properly. But, there’s more to it than that. They are also expected to be a technical assessor of risk, and they need […]
May 10th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Software releases are the single biggest factor contributing to downtime across all industries. Almost without exception whenever you hear of a high-profile outage with a bank or an airline it is almost always related to a software release or a high-risk change being made to a system. While organizations can put quality checks and governance […]
May 2nd, 2016 | Published in Release Management
As release managers and executives, we address release complexity and complex dependencies between releases by combining software releases...
April 27th, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, IT Governance, Release Management, Test Case Management, Test Environment Management
A pattern we’re noticing more and more is that technology departments are starting to get out in front of the business. All too often this creates an odd paradox: the business might be asking technology to slow down because it hasn’t adapted to a continuous delivery model. This is especially true in organizations that have […]
April 8th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
“To truly achieve IT delivery assurance, companies must empower program managers and delivery managers with a dedicated tool for introducing orchestrated, end-to-end control of the delivery process and visibility into project statuses, delivery progress and software quality across the entire organization.” For years, project management offices have gotten by with their project portfolio management (PPM) […]
April 5th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
“To keep up with increasing demand for high quality, rapid software releases, IT organizations must shift to Disciplined DevOps — an approach to software release collaboration that blends agile delivery with risk management and governance that support delivery assurance” DevOps has become something of a buzzword in the IT community as companies craft their own […]
March 31st, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Two decades makes a huge difference for software developers. We’ve gone from months-long development cycles to lifecycles measured in weeks or days, with some on the “bleeding edge” executing highly agile software releases even more frequently than that. At Plutora, our management team has been at the forefront of this transformation for decades. We’ve moved the […]
March 28th, 2016 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
“In many real-world case studies, Plutora has resulted in returns exceeding 600%. A typical return is around 400% depending on the depth of using the products. Factoring additional savings from Environment reclamation and reduction in capital spending on servers or Cloud Environments, ROI can balloon to over 1000%.” Even as software release demands exceed the capacity of […]
March 24th, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
Test environment conflict is when two projects or two releases require access to the same testing resources at the same time. For a Test Environment Manager this might mean that two projects need to test against the same database or deploy to the same environment at the same time, and for a release manager this […]
March 22nd, 2016 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
This is the third installment in a series on hiring considerations within a modern enterprise software environment. For the second installment, click here. An Enterprise Release Manager (ERM) is a new role in the enterprise and it is a by-product of several factors. First, enterprises continue to report larger portfolios with an increased number of smaller, more independent projects. At the […]
March 19th, 2016 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Your IT team has adopted DevOps approaches to enable a faster and more reliable way to move initiatives between development teams and operations. However, you’re still witnessing inconsistent results despite a concerted effort to move towards continuous delivery. Why? Automating various steps of the application development process makes life easier for players in the various […]
March 17th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Of all the jobs we’ve described in our series of posts focused on hiring, the application release manager role is the role that has been the most constant over the past several years. Deployment managers and test environment managers are relatively new job roles emerging only as the number of applications and environments grew as […]
March 3rd, 2016 | Published in Release Management
When your company conducts a high-risk migration to a new platform or when you are faced with a challenge to preserve uptime on a critical day, you plan for every possible contingency and you look at every single facet of your enterprise to identify the weakest link. You prepare. Release planning requires much of the same. Whether […]
March 1st, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
“Complexity” is often viewed as a negative. This is perhaps even more the case at scale, where some degree of complexity is unavoidable. Any unnecessary complexity, states the conventional wisdom, is public enemy number one. But does that wisdom ring true? Let’s look a little closer at the contours and implications of complexity at scale. […]
February 28th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
The executive concern regarding software development used to revolve around the choice between a waterfall approach or agile teams. Now, the development world is almost decidedly convinced that agile is the way to go. With agile projects seeing 350% to 600% greater success than waterfall development (depending on project size), who could argue with the […]
February 25th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
The future of software releases is clear. Continuous delivery is here to stay. But does that mean that legacy software systems and infrastructure need to be altogether abandoned? If you polled the people busy redefining best practices today, they’d agree that in a decade we’re going to be effortlessly collaborating on highly complex systems that […]
February 24th, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
DevOps in a startup is defined by developer-driven automation. Instrument everything, establish a culture of automation, and enable your developers to deploy software to production frequently and you’ll be practicing DevOps. You’ll be using any number of accepted tools to achieve these goals from open source tools such as Puppet and Jenkins to public clouds […]
February 22nd, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Continuous Delivery is a trend that is taking the software industry by storm, and Continuous Delivery Management (CDM) is a new approach to release management that provides both transparency and a governance structure to manage continuous delivery across a large software enterprise. CDM is a developing focus area designed to apply the benefits of continuous […]
February 18th, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
We’ve said it on this blog before, and we’ll repeat the same message: Solving a software engineering problem is simple physics. It takes a set amount of energy to move a project from point A to point B, and changing the process or path doesn’t change the unavoidable fact that difficult software problems are difficult […]
February 16th, 2016 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management, Test Environment Management
If you work for a large company, you’ll often look around and wonder if moving to a daily release cycle or automating deployments is even possible given the number of meetings and the amount of process your releases are subject to. Between the CAB meetings, the QA schedules, and the coordinated conference calls it’s tough […]
February 10th, 2016 | Published in Release Management
Managing software releases across a large enterprise can be costly. Your organization has to employ several release managers and teams of people dedicated to testing and environment management. If you haven’t stepped back and thought about cost over the last several years you might want to take some time to think about how you can […]
January 22nd, 2016 | Published in Release Management
The software industry is constantly changing. Whether we’re developing for new mobile platforms, adopting the latest languages, or upgrading our methodology there are few constants when it comes to modern software. As timelines for software delivery projects tend to be shorter, more continuous approaches, we’ve compiled a list of the five reasons that software projects […]
January 16th, 2016 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Gone are the days of the “Golden Master”. In fact, programmers new to the industry may not even recognize the term. Let’s travel back in time, before cable modems and fast internet connections to when software was distributed on floppy disks or CD-ROMs. There was little or no opportunity to “update” software once you shipped it, and add-ons […]
January 10th, 2016 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Happy 2016. To help you think about the Environment Management year ahead, we’ve assembled a collection of resolutions for you to try out. Resolution #1 – I will plan ahead for environment requirements. Many environment managers operate in a reactive mode. They make some wildly inaccurate forecasts about future demand and they sit on excess […]
January 4th, 2016 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
What is Enterprise Release Management? Whilst it is common to think of Release Management as the final promotion of a component into a production environment we take a far broader view of the release management process ranging from the strategy of establishing quarterly, monthly or fortnightly release windows, prioritising the contents of each release, understanding […]
December 11th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Years and years, decades: that’s how long some of the release processes we support have been running. In a sector that is so focused on the newest technologies it can be challenging to design systems that last more than a few years, but when you support software development at the largest scale you notice something: […]
October 29th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
If you work in a large enterprise you know what I’m talking about. Some teams move fast (maybe too fast) while other teams still operate as if they are in 1985. How do you get these teams to move faster? There’s such a wide range of capabilities in today’s enterprise it can often feel like […]
October 18th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Most large software enterprises are facing a tough choice: on one hand you have the control and stability of traditional ITSM, and on the other you have the self-service freedom and agility of more modern approaches such as DevOps. As organizations move toward self-service releases and more rapid iterations change management presents a problematic bottleneck […]
October 14th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Bimodal IT is a trend identified by Gartner that describes a common challenge for IT departments – how to support two modes of operation within the same IT department. According to Gartner’s definition: “Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.” Bimodal IT […]
September 29th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Gartner has put a name on a common experience across all industries – IT departments often support two different approaches to IT. One side is focused on agility and rapid time to market while the other is focused on stability and traditional service management. With Bimodal IT you have one department operating in two modes: […]
September 20th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Large organizations engaged in enterprise release management seldom have a single “enterprise release manager.” Instead of a single, “enterprise-wide” responsibility, most large, decentralized organizations assign responsibility for more strategic, release management functions to several existing roles. An enterprise release management practice supports and is supported by the following enterprise release management roles: IT Portfolio Management […]
September 11th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Enterprise software development has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last decade as most companies have transitioned to more iterative, agile approaches to software delivery. This overall acceleration of the software development effort has been focused squarely on more tactical practices related to software development. From source control to scrums to deployment automation, most IT […]
September 3rd, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Across industries, time to market for new software initiatives is decreasing over time and the frequency with which releases are transitioned from development to production is increasing. Put simply, every major company is turning into a software company and software is being delivered faster. This transformation is driven by the widespread adoption of agile methodologies […]
August 27th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
With Enterprise Release Management (ERM) organizations can achieve real agility above the level of individual projects. When management functions are informed by feeds updated continuously and when multiple departments agree upon consolidated dashboards of release progress organizations can start focusing on efficient execution and avoid interrupting productive resources just to measure progress. Unlocking the Organization: […]
August 20th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
There are three characteristics that drive the need to establish a strong Release Management Process (ERM) practice and they are all related to the complications that accompany scale: Team Size – The number of people involved in an enterprise release. System Scope – The scope of an enterprise system and interdependencies between subsystems affected by an enterprise […]
August 13th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Enterprise Release Management (ERM) is an emerging set of practices designed to support enterprise change initiatives and software delivery across multiple projects within large organizations. ERM is the management of the software delivery lifecycle across multiple projects and departments within a large organization – the orchestration of activities and resources across multiple, interdependent software releases and […]
August 6th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Last week wasn’t a good week for the stability of high-profile systems. United airlines had a ground-stop due to an “automation failure”, the New York Stock Exchange suffered a problem that caused an interruption of trading, and the Wall Street Journal had issues with site availability. United is blaming this week’s outage on a bad router, the […]
July 10th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
This week we’re attending the Sys-con DevOps Summit in New York City. It’s a great conference and energy behind DevOps is enormous. Thousands of attendees from every company you can imagine are focused on automation, the challenges of DevOps, and how to bring greater agility to software delivery. But, even with the energy behind DevOps […]
June 12th, 2015 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Release managers understand what it means to have a triple-booked Outlook calendar. They have calendars subject to rapid last-minute changes as project timelines slip and environments issues cause a series of fire-drill emergencies to be solved right now. Most release managers spend all day, every day in a series of meetings trying to glean the […]
June 9th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
When Forrester analysts Amy DeMartine and Kurt Bittner wrote “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective DevOps” the habit I focused on was habit number one: “Establish trust and transparency between Dev and Ops.” This is at the core of release management: DevOps Trust and Transparency – ensuring that both sides of this equation agree when it […]
May 30th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
This post could have also been titled “Questions Release Managers should be Prepared to Answer.” Imagine you report to a VP who is asking you questions about how prepared you are for releases and how you are addressing a set of emerging issues. Everyone who has participated in release management understands that software change is […]
May 26th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
It’s 3 AM in California, and you are still awake trying to sort through a release process that has been delayed by several hours. The deployment to the main application cluster took several extra hours due to an unanticipated problem with the servers, and now everyone is waiting on the lead database administrator to call […]
May 21st, 2015 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management
How many issue trackers does your organization run? How about change management systems? If you are a large organization, the answer’s probably more than a handful due to the way business grows through mergers and acquisitions. When managing a release driven by projects using separate issue trackers most retreat to spreadsheets to create a common […]
May 16th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Do you think development teams really update those BMC Remedy tickets with all the changes contained in a release? They don’t. Most of them just “check the box” and move on. They choose a Risk Level that won’t raise questions from the Change Control managers and they work around the checks and balances. The alternative […]
May 11th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Effective development teams understand incremental development and value lightweight process, and most developers working in 2015 deliver software in iterations punctuated by iteration planning meetings or Scrums. Gone are the days of waterfall development and projects that take months-and-months to deliver results. While most effective organizations have transitioned software development to some form of Agile […]
May 3rd, 2015 | Published in Release Management
It’s a “given” in software development – release schedules always slip. Requirements shift, developers underestimate timelines, and quality assurance (QA) finds unexpected defects. Another law of software development is that final release dates are often inflexible. If a market or a holiday shopping season defines your release date you understand how important it is to […]
April 21st, 2015 | Published in Release Management, Test Case Management, Test Environment Management
As a user of a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution, you’re probably hearing about Enterprise Release Management (ERM) as an emerging solution for managing enterprise change and transformation. However, like many others, you’re probably confused about the difference between PPM and ERM. You want to know things like whether or not you can use your […]
April 14th, 2015 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management
Change Management and Release Management are different but related functions within organizations. At a high level, Change activities relate to the process of requesting changes, assessing changes, authorizing changes and reviewing changes. Release activities include planning, designing, configuration, rollout planning, testing communication and deployment. The Release Management function provides the schedule and execution whilst the […]
April 5th, 2015 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management
Here are a few questions to help you assess the scope of your release management challenges. Based on the answers to these questions, you can calculate your Release Management risk factor. This will help you understand what steps you need to take today to mitigate release management risks that accompany software development at scale. Release […]
March 7th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has become an essential tool for assessing IT initiatives. Originally developed to assess the capabilities of government subcontractors in the 1990s, the CMM is now used by IT management to define best practices in a particular practice area. From Application Development to Database Management every practice in the IT department […]
March 1st, 2015 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
While the DevOps movement and associated technologies have garnered much attention and fanfare, few have addressed the core issue – the hand off from development to operations. We tend to not acknowledge the importance of Release Management – a critical DevOps function. Release Management is the bridge between development and operations that needs to be […]
February 10th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
DevOps Infographic – Enterprise Reality vs Unicorns
February 4th, 2015 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
Many of the well-known examples of DevOps success we read in blogs on the Internet paint an idyllic picture of DevOps productivity. A team was facing a stodgy, slow-moving operations department, teams weren’t delivering software on time. Those teams moved to DevOps, became proactive about infrastructure and deployment automation, and an overnight transition to productivity […]
January 26th, 2015 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
2014 was the year that DevOps arrived in large enterprises, and we’re seeing several large corporations moving to more agile software delivery and more frequent releases. We’ve helped many companies move toward DevOps practices using Plutora to provide necessary transparency to manage risk and track agile software development efforts, and over the past few years […]
January 19th, 2015 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Is it done yet or Why RACI is Essential Whether you are a release manager, a release engineer, or a someone just supporting a release you understand that the intersection of software releases and instant messaging can be frustrating. Whether you use Skype, Jabber, Slack, or any other group-based instant messaging application your experience during […]
January 12th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
I keep coming back to this analogy because it’s the most apt description of what Plutora provides for the Enterprise. We provide the software that you need to manage a busy release schedule. Without Plutora you are forced to use manual methods to orchestrate releases and manage resources, and the analogy that connects with most […]
January 8th, 2015 | Published in Release Management
Happy New Year from Plutora! We’re looking forward to the new year as we continue to develop products aimed at taking the effort out of environment, release, and deployment management. To help you organize your approach to the New Year we wanted to take some time to propose a few New Year resolutions for Release […]
January 5th, 2015 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management, Test Environment Management
The challenge facing today’s project management professionals is supporting a more agile approach to software releases while managing orderly governance and production controls that are necessary. Project managers have become air traffic controllers landing more projects more frequently on more runways, and as the skies become more crowded it’s important to understand both the trends […]
December 10th, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Release Risk and Release Management Governance Continuous integration, continuous deployment pipelines, automated configuration and deployment tools such as Puppet and Chef all of these systems contribute to an IT department that understands that agility in software releases means more automation and finding smarter ways to manage risk without introducing needless process. But, what if you […]
December 8th, 2014 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management
Considers Risks When a CIO or a CTO thinks of the applications they support it is almost always in terms of a “portfolio” When a research company named Gleanster poll executives about agile data management they discovered an interesting trend. Companies are reporting an increase in portfolio sizes with just over 36% of all respondents […]
November 5th, 2014 | Published in Release Management
Which side of the wall of confusion are your governance gates on? Whenever people discuss DevOps they always speak of a “Wall of Confusion” between development and operations, and while there is certainly a barrier to understanding it’s more than just a “wall.” I see it more as a “canyon of distrust” or a “gulf […]
October 29th, 2014 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management
Your organization starts with a simple mode – a single project will have two week “sprints”. Every two weeks you are going to aim for a release to production. This model works well up to a certain scale. Teams of 4-5 developers working alongside a 1-2 QA testers on a small project are able to […]
October 21st, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
5 Signs of a Dysfunctional Release Process It’s easy to fall into a pattern of dysfunctional releases, release processes that are characterized by delay, inefficiency, and endless meetings that encourage people to view releases as a problem. These are the kinds of meetings that inspire references to the movie Office Space or emails that include clippings […]
September 17th, 2014 | Published in Release Management
DevOps was created to reduce many of these same conflicts and while DevOps has had several high-profile successes it still presents a challenge for larger organizations. Large enterprises managing mission critical systems still have separate silos for development and operations. In this post I discuss how DevOps fits into the enterprise and what release managers […]
September 10th, 2014 | Published in Deployment Management, Release Management, Test Environment Management
This blog post focuses on the difference between “Release Engineers” and “Release Managers,” and I’m writing it because I’ve talked to people who don’t see what separates the two roles. It’s an important distinction, and an organization’s view of the difference is an indicator of how mature its enterprise release process is. What Is Release […]
September 9th, 2014 | Published in Release Management
Previously on this blog we’ve talked about how release-reporting metrics is an art rather than a science, and we’ve also outlined some core release metrics our customers use to track progress. In this first follow-up post, I’ll provide more detail on three of the 10 key metrics previously discussed: • Total Release Downtime in Hours […]
September 3rd, 2014 | Published in Release Management
When it comes to testing and quality assurance, providing the right incentives and metrics is critical. Your release plan shouldn’t reward quality assurance and quality engineering teams for rushing systems through the QA process, and you shouldn’t create systems that penalize anyone for identifying bugs or other issues that will affect quality. Quality and appropriate […]
August 27th, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
If you’ve been a release manager you’ll understand that you sit between two groups: An operations group tasked with accepting and supporting a software release. This group wants a predictable process, they view releases as incidents to be managed, and they answer to a business that wants predictability and accountability. One or more development groups […]
August 25th, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Over at Plutora things are moving fast. We have experienced phenomenal growth and as such we’ve moved into larger office space. Our Global HQ’s is now based out of Mountain View, CA, a few minutes walk from the world renowned GooglePlex. Our laser focus on building the best Enterprise SaaS tools in the Release & Test Environment […]
July 20th, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
A Release Coordinator typically is responsible for owning the planning and coordination of all phases and activities involved in the release of a system or system update into the production environment. Their role facilitates release meetings and develops the release recommendation and release deployment plan based on input from multiple stakeholders within various portfolio teams. They normally would […]
July 13th, 2014 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Small projects are characterized by factors such as short duration; small team; budget size and balance between the time committed to delivering the project itself and the time committed to managing the project. Small-scale projects are by far the most common form. so the following outlines the common issues in a small project and essential […]
June 17th, 2014 | Published in Release Management
Abbott and Costello’s classic baseball routine celebrates 75 years this year. It’s simply timeless comedy that is still just as funny today. When talking with clients about their processes and pain points, referencing “who’s on first, what’s on second?” all too often gets a knowing smile from Release Managers and Test Environment Managers alike. So […]
December 9th, 2013 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management
Whilst onsite to roll out Plutora within a government client recently, we had the opportunity to sit through one of their release management meetings. The meeting was well attended, so well attended that some even volunteered to sit on the floor. When we entered the room, we heard someone ask “did you bring your helmet?” […]
November 26th, 2013 | Published in IT Governance, Release Management
The goal of any organization should be to have clearly defined release phases, where all parties are aware of the phase activities and key gates/milestones. The absence of purpose built collaboration tools has caused barriers in communication, information sharing and tracking of these activities across teams involved in the many moving parts of an enterprise […]
November 21st, 2013 | Published in Release Management, Test Environment Management