Why ServiceNow Release Management (DPR) When ITSM Change Management Exists?

[Sujit Agrawal]

Think of Change Management as the traffic light at an intersection controlling each vehicle (change) for safety. Release Management is the city traffic planner, orchestrating the overall flow, managing detours, large events, and ensuring the city’s transportation plan unfolds smoothly. If organizations are pushing toward digital transformation, increased agility, or improved collaboration between IT and the business, layering DPR on top of traditional Change Management is a strategic and practical move.

ServiceNow’s Digital Product Release (DPR) module is designed to seamlessly connect software delivery pipeline to both IT operations and business planning. Here’s how it typically integrates and adds value:

•  CI/CD Tools: ServiceNow DPR connects natively with popular CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, GitLab, and more. This allows automatic creation and updating of release records as developers commit, build, and deploy code.
• Automated Change Requests: As code moves through the pipeline, DPR can auto-generate Change Requests, pre-filling risk and impact data pulled from the DevOps toolchain.
• Approval Workflows: Integration enables automated or expedited approvals (e.g., via standard change models), reducing manual bottlenecks for low-risk changes while escalating higher risk deployments as needed.
• Bi-directional Feedback: Deployment status and pipeline events are pushed back into ServiceNow, providing real-time visibility to business stakeholders and IT operations teams.
• Metrics and Dashboards: DPR aggregates data from DevOps tools and ServiceNow to provide full traceability from planning, to deployment, to incident resolution in a single dashboard.

Example -

A developer merges code in GitHub. Jenkins builds and tests the new feature. This triggers a DPR release item in ServiceNow, which automatically raises a change for review. If the change meets predefined criteria (low-risk, automated tests passed), it’s auto-approved and released. If not, it goes to CAB for review, with all technical data attached.

Change Management ensures that every change is reviewed for potential risk, protecting production stability. Release Management/DPR ensures that changes are delivered efficiently, aligned with business priorities, and integrated with modern delivery (DevOps) methods. When combined, we get safe, fast, and transparent delivery balancing agility with compliance.