Move Faster, Get Better: ERM is Continuous Process Improvement

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 alongside the increasing prevalence of DevOps as a philosophy affecting release and operational agility.Self-service deployments, release automation, and more distributed operational responsibility have created a situation where the remaining obstacles to efficient execution are self-imposed.  While teams can move very quickly the overall enterprise and the organization is struggling to keep up. How can companies move faster while managing risks associated with large, interconnected software systems.As highly competitive markets continue to reward organizations that can deliver quality software faster and more frequently it is essential that enterprises focus on identifying opportunities for greater efficiency.  It doesn’t matter how quickly an individual team can deliver if that team is constantly waiting due to test environments issues or coordination problems between internal and external partners.  Every software release should yield information leading to process improvements for the next iteration.  Enterprise Release Manager (ERM) is how an enterprise accelerates.ERM supports process improvement for increasingly agile enterprises by capturing accurate status throughout all phases of the release cycle. ERM provides an institution with rich historical data that can be analyzed after every release cycle.  Under an ERM practice-specific, release-related metrics are captured and assessed and a rigorous post-implementation analysis is performed such that improvements can be identified and modifications to release strategy can be introduced into an iterative process of continuous improvement.  ERM is an agent of change.  Organizations can start to track the performance of now isolated DevOps and Agile initiatives and establish common best practices to facilitate the transition of all projects to modern, iterative release processes.