By definition, Release Management involves deploying changes
to an IT environment and after these changes have been made, RM is used to
introduce these changes and to manage their release. Software projects take a
lot of time and hard work to come into fruition. When software is built, the
developers need to have a plan to deploy it successfully into the market;
otherwise, consumers may not respond well. If there's a practical plan to
manage its release, then the end user will be a satisfied consumer.
Software
release management is thereby a process of guaranteeing the release is
properly scheduled and deployment to the market or test areas go according to
plan. A few other concepts can be used
to describe this process; for instance, 'automating the path to production' is
another element included in the process.
In order to understand the practices necessary for managing
release properly, it's important to understand the terms used.
Release: the
version released for testing purposes
Deployment unit:
the actual physical deployment of the app
Request for
change: RFCs capture the high-level change that is to be made on an existing
app
Build: a part of
the application which may be operational
Baseline: this is
a snapshot of all the files involved in the production
When studied in full, the whole topic can be a complex one,
which cannot be completely covered in a single page. A lot of IT departments
tend to avoid the topic, because there doesn't appear to be any formal RM plan
in place so organizations have suffered in the past when trying to roll out or
upgrade applications and systems without affecting mission-critical evens and
processes.
Change Management and RM are ITIL processes, which have been
known to overlap because quite a number of IT departments just role them out as
one major ballgame. The components required in any RM are
- Hardware
- Software
- Services
- People
- Documents
- Workflow
- Roles
Benefits of RM would
have to be anyone's ability to successfully deploy and implement changes
without having messed up any critical services to an organization. This
requires adequate planning obviously, a combination of change management
processes, overseeing the building of release packages and proper testing of
the product.
When it comes to deployment, RM lacks a number of tools
which could make it a much simpler process. An automated process would be a
fine start, but there is a significant amount of documentation involved in this
process and exactly how it works is still a theory. Any modern organization
hoping to upgrade their systems to the next level without hurting normal
business operations would have to implement an effective RM plan in order to
cross over to the new system safely.
This is a Guest Post By : Rose Martin
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