Exploring Digital Product Release

Release version: Washingtondc

Updated November 4, 2024

5 minutes to read

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Summary of Exploring Digital Product Release

The ServiceNow® Digital Product Release application is designed to enhance the management of digital product releases by streamlining the process from planning to delivery. It enables release managers, product managers, and program managers to collaborate effectively and ensure adherence to company policies throughout the release life cycle, which includes planning, development, and delivery phases.

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Key Features

Release Management: Automates processes to manage the release schedule, including defining release readiness targets and creating release templates.
Approval Definitions: Establishes rules for task approvals from relevant stakeholders, ensuring compliance with project standards.
Included Products: Organizes related digital products to understand their relationships and manage them effectively.
Release Bundles: Groups multiple releases for concurrent tracking and management, helping to identify dependencies and conflicts.
Release Execution: Continuously monitors progress to ensure products are ready by the target date.
Release Calendar: Manages multiple readiness targets and schedules to prevent overlap.
Release Templates: Provides a predefined blueprint for the release process to streamline activities and focus on necessary tasks.
Workspace: A unified location for defining release processes and managing products, features, and versions.
Dashboards: Offers insights into release progress, risks, and software quality for informed decision-making.

Key Outcomes

By utilizing the Digital Product Release application, ServiceNow customers can expect improved collaboration among stakeholders, efficient tracking of release statuses, and enhanced compliance with organizational standards. This leads to timely and successful product deliveries, ultimately driving better product management and execution within their teams.

The ServiceNow® Digital Product Release application enables you to streamline the process of delivering digital products by managing the process from planning to delivery.

Digital Product Release overview

Digital Product Release (DPR) is a release management solution that helps release managers, product managers, and program managers manage the release process. They can track the progress of releases while ensuring that the releases adhere to the company's policies.

This solution automates processes that enable collaboration between stakeholders, so everyone can track release status, from start to finish.

Digital Product Release workflow

A digital product has a release life cycle that starts with planning, goes through development, and ends with delivery. There are many different phases to a product's release life cycle, and each phase can have its own set of activities. The following infographic illustrates the life cycle of a digital product.

Infographic showing the release life-cycle for digital products. For details, refer to the following description. — Figure 1. Release life cycle for digital products

Create a product and add features, product enhancements, and versions.
Plan the scope of a release by moving product enhancements into versions.
Initiate a release and set its release readiness target date.
Execute the release by tracking its progress and completing phases and tasks within each phase.
Validate the release phase against mapped policies to ensure that the release adheres to organizational standards.
Get the product ready by the specified target date to make it available for deployment.

Personas

Digital Product Release is aimed at the following personas:


Release manager	Manages a Release calendar Establishes a Release process, including policy gates
Release coordinator or Program manager	Communicates dependencies across a release Approves the scope of a release Provides status updates to the Release team
Product manager	Releases new products, enhancements, and features Communicates updates to the development status Plans the scope of a release Initiates a release
Engineering lead	Ensures development of new products, enhancements, and features Connects development scope to a release

Digital Product Release benefits


Benefit	Feature	Users
Define release readiness targets for single or recurring release schedules.	Release readiness target	Release manager
Define release templates that include phases, tasks, policies, and approval tasks.	Release templates	Release manager
Create policies to automate the release process.	Policy administration	Release manager
Manage products, features, product enhancements, versions, and initiate a release.	Release planning	Product manager
Plan and manage the release process from start to finish.	Release execution	Release manager

Digital Product Release key terms

Approval definition: An approval definition is a set of rules that specify how tasks will be approved from a set of stakeholders for a release. For example, the QA team might approve code quality or the Security team might approve on the security aspects. An approval for a task can be requested from an individual user or a user group.
Included products: Included products help you organize and manage related digital products. By creating a product hierarchy using Included products, you can understand the relationships between different products and make informed decisions about product management.
Release bundle: A release bundle helps you to group multiple releases to track and manage them concurrently from a single place. They also help you to identify dependencies and potential conflicts, and make any necessary adjustments to ensure a smooth and coordinated release process.
Release execution: Release execution is a continuous process to track and monitor the progress of a release. It helps you ensure that all products in the release are ready by the release readiness target date.
Release calendar: A release calendar helps you group multiple release readiness targets. It can also contain blackout, maintenance, and other user-defined schedules to avoid overlap of release targets on those dates.
Release readiness target: A release readiness target is when a release is ready to be released. It helps release managers to determine the dates at which the products should be ready for deployment by the team.
Release template: A release template is like a blueprint for a release process, which includes a predefined set of phases, tasks, policies, and approval tasks.; Release teams can use these release templates to create a release. All phases, tasks, approvals, and phase gates from the template will be automatically applied to the newly created release. It helps the release teams avoid redundant activities and focus on tracking and performing all the necessary tasks to complete the release on schedule.
Stage-oriented release: A release that follows a stage-oriented process. This process doesn't have phases with predefined end dates. It is suitable for teams that work toward completing product enhancements and objectives. Teams can move to the next phase after they have completed tasks and met policy compliance for the current phase. Teams have the flexibility to restart any completed phase if they encounter an issue that requires them to go back.
Timeline-oriented release: A release that follows a timeline-oriented process. This process has defined end dates for each phase of the release. It is suitable for teams that work toward the planned deadlines and have phases with a specific duration.
Version planning: Version planning is an activity to plan a product's enhancements into versions to define the scope of work for each version.
You can create a release after version planning is complete. The release must be associated with a release readiness target, which determines the start and end dates for phases and tasks based on the target date.