What is release management?

The very first step in release management is recognising the need for new product features or changes to established functions or services. Change requests go through predetermined channels, and are evaluated based on need, feasibility, cost, and other criteria. It’s worth noting that not every one of your change requests will receive approval; those that do move onward into the planning stage.

The planning stage includes creating and setting up the release management system. As such, setting aside more time for this stage will likely be necessary.

In this stage, the business defines the structure that the release will take. A precisely defined structure will give your team a roadmap to follow as they move through subsequent steps and push the release through to deployment and beyond. Your release plan can be as simple as a checklist, detailing actions and tasks to be completed in their chronological order, as well as teams or individuals responsible for each. That said, many businesses find that detailed digital workflows provide the clearest direction, ensuring that everyone is working towards common goals and that essential requirements are being met.

Effective release plans usually include milestones, responsibilities, estimated timelines, deadlines, and a clear, comprehensive view of the project as a whole. The release plan is something that teams can refer back to throughout the entire process. Establishing a repeatable release management system usable across multiple releases allows you to speed up future processes and better coordinate efforts, company-wide.

With approval, ideation, and planning behind you, you now enter actual development. Designing and building the product, component, or function requires addressing any issues that may arise, and converting your project’s established requirements into software. This stage overlaps somewhat with the next stage.

Throughout the designing-and-building stage, the in-progress product should be sent through a real-world testing environment. As the various functional and non-functional tests uncover problems and bugs in the software, the release is sent back for revision. Most releases will go through multiple iterations, moving back and forth between stages in an iterative process until the release is certified for final review.

Before deployment, the release should go through a final review, taking into account any new information or insights acquired during testing. The QA team will analyse and inspect the final product to ensure that it meets the standards and requirements established in the planning stage. Although some bugs may sneak through into deployment, this final review should provide your teams with enough information to be able to handle any problems that might occur at or after product launch.

With final approval from the project owner, the product is sent into production and can be released to the end user. Any supplementary educational material, including change notifications, operating guides, and necessary training resources will need to be released at the same time. Be sure to tailor these resources not only to the end user, but also to any company-side support teams that may need to field user questions or assist in troubleshooting.

The deployment stage represents the culmination of the release management process, but the process doesn’t end at launch. Teams will need to follow up to access the release, identify any bottlenecks or hurdles, and improve the process for future products.

Be aware that businesses of various sizes will likely follow a very similar end-to-end process, with essentially the same steps. However, smaller organisations with fewer projects may find that their version of the release management process is much less complex when compared to larger businesses. As a company scales its releases to match its growth, and as teams and departments expand to include more people, release management expands as well, requiring more advanced support tools.