What is Release Management?

Release Management is the management of the software delivery lifecycle across multiple projects and departments within a large organization. It is the orchestration of activities and resources across multiple, interdependent software releases and changes initiatives to deliver software at scale. While managing both the technical and organizational complications that accompany delivering changes to enterprise-scale, composite systems within a large organization.

It’s easy to say that Release Management is a “holistic approach” and a “multi-disciplinary IT governance structure,” but these abstract definitions don’t help. We’ve written this blog to add clarity to a practice that most market leaders are already following but which few have defined.

Release Management addresses a critical gap in the enterprise. It is the bridge between tactical ‘agility’ and a more strategic 'acceleration' across an entire enterprise.

Release Management isn’t magic, and it isn’t “market speak.” It is defined by the practices that are defining the efficient software enterprise today, and it is the full realization of Agile in the enterprise.

Practices that Define Release Management

Enterprise Release Management is a practice area that covers a wide array of activities all focused on delivering software, but it is defined by a set of practices that support a multi-project, cross-functional approach to managing the end-to-end release process.

Multi-Project Release Coordination

Maintaining a consolidated event calendar across all projects included in a large, composite release. This includes the orchestrated deployment of these projects to applications in the enterprise operating environment.

Environment Management

Tracking capacity requirements and work-effort for environments required during the software delivery process. Support decisions regarding the use of automated provisioning of environments or scheduled use of shared persistent environments.

Automated Release Reporting

Capturing metrics and key performance indicators for all release-related processes, gates, and resources, presented in dashboards for all stakeholders to identify progress toward the enterprise release.

Continuous Process Improvement

Measuring release-related metrics and tracking progress across the end-to-end software delivery process to support an iterative approach to process improvement.

The four practices that define release management are all organized at a strategic, portfolio-wide level to provide IT management with visibility into the most strategic processes that serve to support coordinated releases. As organizations adopt a more Agile and accelerated approach to software delivery with an emphasis on best practices at a tactical level. Release management provides a series of practices designed to foster and support this agility and align it with decision-makers responsible for entire portfolios.

How Release Management Accelerates Business

Release Management captures the best practices and alignment strategies of the top performers and creates a new, company-wide approach to unifying efforts around the singular goal of delivering software efficiently.While many organizations have successfully created focused groups leveraging both Agile Software Development alongside DevOps, most organizations have yet to create a comprehensive strategy for adopting such practices across the enterprise. Release Management provides a context for identifying opportunities for greater efficiency and for using Release Management as a tool to move projects toward a more iterative and Agile approach to software delivery. Release Management makes it possible to scale Agile beyond the project or department level.Do you want to learn more about Release Management? Download our free white paper: What is Enterprise Release Management?