The Ultimate Guide To Release Management Process

1
(No Transcript)
2
Is your application frequently running into bug
concerns? Is your customer engagement decreasing
due to poor app performance and increased
downtime? You may need to reconsider your
release management process. Half-baked releases
are a huge NO when it comes to releasing your
software, especially in a fast-paced,
ever-evolving IT business. 75 of performance
issues arise due to updates in software or change
in its environment. To reduce expensive delays
and improve the organisational workflow, you
should invest in strategic release management and
DataOps solutions.
3
Understanding Release Management If your
organisation is vested in developing applications
and updating software features, youre already
familiar with the concept of release management.
And you understand the importance of an efficient
release management process. Release management
is the bridge that connects all the stages
encompassing a software release from codebase
creation, functionality testing to deployment.
Release management plays a role every time new
software is launched, or existing application
updates are requested. While the release
management process may differ and needs
customisation depending upon the organisational
requirements, there are five fundamental
components of release management.
4
5 Phases Of The Release Management Process The
Planning Release Planning is the most
extensive, time-consuming phase. In this phase,
you require to create a structure of your
software development process from inception to
delivery. An efficient release management plan
will enable your teams to remain on track and
ensure quality standards and client requirements
are adequately fulfilled. A release plan can be
strategised through various techniques. One of
the most common release management approaches is
SDLC or systems development life cycle. The SDLC
technique enables software developers to plan,
create, monitor, and update software application
systems with a greater level of efficacy and
quality. You can implement SDLC alone or in
association with any other project management
processes.
5

• In this stage, develop a streamlined workflow
  that you monitor and your team can follow during
  the entire release management process.
• The workflow should elaborate on how the entire
  release is staged and the roles and
  responsibilities of each team member. Your
  release plan needs to mention the following
• Significant timelines associated with the project
• Delivery dates
• Client requirements (required feature updates or
  any other changes)
• The overall project scope
• You can use various ways to chalk out your plan
  and specify the process.
• Release management checklist technique The
  checklist must highlight the functions of various
  processes and the roles and responsibilities in
  approximate chronological order.
• Release workflow creation technique Utilise
  intuitive flowchart, colour codings and other
  visual elements to assign timelines, roles, and
  tasks.

6
Also Read How Successful Release Management
Process Works? Building Phase Once the release
plan is finalised, your team can begin the
building and development phase. The building
phase involves the actual creation of the
application or software product. Throughout the
building phase, you need to adhere to the
requirements specified in the release plan. Once
all the concerns and feature updates are
incorporated, the build needs to be subjected to
real-world scenario testing. This may involve
numerable iterations. As the team creates the
application features, it is sent (usually
automatically) to the test IT environment for
user acceptance testing. This enables the team to
detect any bugs or concerns that may come up in
the real-world scenario. As bugs are detected,
the erroneous build is moved back for development
at stage two. With an iterative release
management process, the workflow may keep
shifting from phase two to three until the
release meets acceptance criteria and receives a
green signal.
7
User Acceptance Testing Have you seen certain
software features mentioning the word beta or
beta testing? Thats what UAT or user
acceptance testing is. UAT involves getting
feedback from the application end-users. For
organisational software meant for internal use,
the software update is shared with the larger
group in the enterprise to gather feedback.
Beta testing involves giving access to the
software to a restricted number of real users for
feedback purposes. This is a critical stage of
the release management process since the amount
of collected data and required changes to fulfil
user demands determine the official launch
timeline. As discussed previously, this is an
iterative process. As issues are detected, the
team goes back to the development phase to fix
the concerns and redesign the features for better
integrity. The developed software or the
updated features needs to clear the UAT phase
before moving into final implementation and
release.
8
Prepare Release This step involves incorporating
the final changes and touches to the application,
considering input from the UAT. A final quality
review is also done in this phase of the release
management process by the QA team. During the
quality check, the QA performs final examinations
to ensure the build quality is aligned with the
minimum acceptable quality standards and business
demands highlighted in the release
plan. Although both UAT and quality assurance
cant always forecast or detect every scenario
that might occur after the launch, these phases
churn out the most common concerns to prevent any
complexities during the launch. After QA review
and validation, the release gets pushed for
deployment. Youll need approval from the product
owner before releasing it in the live
environment.
9

• Deployment Phase
• Finally, after days of hard work and painstaking
  effort, your product is ready for release into
  the live production environment.
• The deployment phase serves two purposes
• Sending the developed or updated software into
  production,
• Training and education about the new product to
  the end-users for efficient use.
• Discussion about the deployment.
• For example, your users should receive a
  notification about the update and how to utilise
  the new functionality within your software
  application. If youve incorporated some
  significant changes in the functionality, you may
  need to offer robust and ongoing training for
  seamless usage.

10
Such training is primarily applicable for
internal software releases. The employees need an
understanding of the software functionality for
proper usage and improved productivity.
Finally, the development team should perform an
assessment of the release performance and discuss
the deployment events. Any lingering concerns
should be identified and documented for
addressing in the next release.
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)