Optimize Applications Release Management

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The business demands high service and IT needs to respond. Rapid customer response through efficient release and deployment is critical to maintain high business satisfaction.
The lack of process ownership leads to chaotic and uncoordinated releases, resulting in costly rework and poor hand-offs.
IT emphasizes tools but release tools and technologies alone will not fix the problem. Tools are integrated into the processes they support – if the process challenges aren’t addressed first, then the tool won’t help.
Releases are traditionally executed in silos with limited communication across the entire release pipeline. Culturally, there is little motivation for cross-functional collaboration and holistic process optimization.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Release management is not solely driven by tools. It is about delivering high quality releases on time through accountability and governance aided by the support of tools.
Release management is independent of your software development lifecycle (SDLC). Release management practices sit as an agnostic umbrella over your chosen development methodology.
Ownership of the entire process is vital. Release managers ensure standards are upheld and the pipeline operates efficiently.

Impact and Result

Acquire release management ownership. Ensure there is appropriate accountability for speed and quality of the releases passing through the entire pipeline. A release manager has oversight over the entire release process and facilitates the necessary communication between business stakeholders and various IT roles.
Instill holistic thinking. Release management includes all steps required to push release and change requests to production along with the hand-off to Operations and Support. Increase the transparency and visibility of the entire pipeline to ensure local optimizations do not generate bottlenecks in other areas.
Standardize and lay a strong release management foundation. Optimize the key areas where you are experiencing the most pain and continually improve.

Optimize Applications Release Management Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize release management, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Optimize Applications Release Management – Executive Brief

1. Review your release management objectives

Assess the current state and define the drivers behind your release management optimizations.

2. Standardize release management

Design your release processes, program framework, and release change management standards, and define your release management team.

3. Roll out release management enhancements

Create an optimization roadmap that fits your context.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Review your release management objectives

Call 1: Align business objectives with technical objectives using release management.
Call 2: Discuss root-cause issues of current state release management roles, communication, processes, and tools.

Guided Implementation 2: Standardize release management

Call 1: Discuss release management target state program framework, team, process, and tools.
Call 2: Validate the adaptability and flexibility of the target state.

Guided Implementation 3: Roll out release management enhancements

Call 1: Review your release management enhancement roll-out plan and metrics to gauge success.
Call 2: Review your approach to govern and manage your release management practices.

Authors

Andrew Kum-Seun

Altaz Valani

Contributors

Paul Dowman, Founder, OK GROW!
Michael Yokota, Founder, Made with Magnolia
Ken Piddington, Chief Information Officer and Executive Advisor, MRE Consulting
Emilio Chemali, Director of Strategic Business Intelligence and DevOps, MRE Consulting
Ben Palacio, Information Systems Analyst, County of Nevada
Doug Birgfield, Senior Partner, Agile Wave
Alan Page, Principal Software Development Engineer, Microsoft
Erik Bjerkelund, Manager of Application Services, Corix
Cecil Newton, Director of Systems Development and Infrastructure, San Francisco Health Plan
Kenneth Brown, Quality Assurance Manager, Highlights for Children Inc.