The Secret to DevOps Success: Release Management
Become a release management expert and enable your enterprise to take on a bold transformation strategy with confidence. In this resource you’ll learn the ins and outs of release management.
- Gain an understanding of the role of the release in software delivery and how it adapts to different enterprise architectures and software development methodologies.
- Get to know the release process, how it is managed, and what makes a release successful in multiple software development lifecycles (SDLCs).
- Explore the central role that release management plays in ensuring IT and business alignment, improving the quality of releases and minimizing risk enterprise-wide.
- Learn how to implement release management in your enterprise as part of value stream management.
Release Management aligns business and IT needs
Today’s customers expect continuous delivery of novel product features and increased value. The business takes on the outside perspective to understand customer needs. IT takes on the inside perspective – the development of the product features. Release management bridges the gap between the two.
From paper methods to computers, from user-owned hardware to cloud subscription services, digital transformation has completely changed the landscape for many industries. Software application development is now required in every industry, and alignment between business needs and IT work is critical.
Release management is the coordination between the two that gives every release the best chance of success. Customer desires are translated into actionable development plans, before being implemented to deliver end-user value.
Release Management maximizes value delivered to end-users
A quality release has two main objectives: it must contain the right components, and those components must work correctly. The right components are classified in terms of value to the end-users. These could be the customers themselves or those who benefit from improved internal business processes. The flow of value creating activities from trigger to recipient is known as the value stream.
As software releases increase in scope and velocity, each release juggles multiple interdependent value streams. Release management first coordinates with the business side to prioritize the right value streams for each release package. Next, it ensures the value streams are managed and deliver bug-free, functional features and without affecting the application’s overall stability. When end-users receive more of the correct features in every release without compromising stability, value is maximized.
Release Management minimizes risk to the enterprise
The more parts in a system, the greater the risk of failure. A software product can contain millions of interconnected parts – the risk is enormous. Additionally, today’s software, tools and applications have many users who may be affected differently by any one bug.
Release management employs multiple strategies in order to minimize risk. Dependencies between interconnected sections of software are identified and understood. Testing and governance are applied to catch faulty sections of code before they are released to production. Deployments are planned with enough team and technical resources to fix problems before they affect users.
Release Management helps navigate accelerating change
The pace of software delivery is accelerating and shows no sign of slowing down. Release management excellency, previously an advantage, is now a necessity. The discipline and capability of delivering enterprise quality software continuously originates in release management.
The move towards product-oriented teams and increased automation means release velocity will continue to increase. When release management is lacking, risk escalates, governance requirements are not met, and disorder is high. Release management must make use of the next generation of tools and promote a culture of excellence in order to scale DevOps to the enterprise level.