What is Release Management?
Seems to me that the definition of release management deserves its own page.
As I flesh out my ideas on release management, I’ll just continue to update my original post with this title.
For additional info:
MSFT’s definition of release management…
Wikipedia’s definition…
October 13, 2006 at 2:23 pm |
Please I need some infor on release management, and the life cycles involved
October 13, 2006 at 9:16 pm |
What kind of info are you looking for? There’s quite a bit to it, do you have a specific question?
February 13, 2007 at 3:42 pm |
what do Release Management Intermediate do?
February 26, 2007 at 5:27 pm |
what are the day to day activities of a release manager and what are the smart tools that a release manager can use to facilitate them ?
June 8, 2007 at 4:13 pm |
Release Management is not for the faint of heart. Every organization is doing something that is successful in getting application changes to production. How the Hero Syndrome comes into play is when there is no institutionalized approach to Release and the last 2 weeks of the project requires heroism beyond the call of duty to meet the ever present deadline.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s as simple as plotting out what is happening now within each functional team throughout the SDLC and plotting that on a process map that identifies the communications channels and who is responsible for them.
The key to managing release is the Release Manager. This person must be a Super PM of sorts that can look at the Project Managers’ plan and see if it passes the laugh test – i.e., has the PM included all the key milestones, environment requirements, deadlines for each major phase of the project and communicated the road map to the project team. If this hasn’t happened, the project will be delayed and key elements forgotten. The RM must know every aspect of the technology being implemented and know when the deliverables are coming in. They are super coordinators of all things and work in conjunction with Configuration Management, Change Management and QA.
In essence the RM is essential for a successful Release Management program – it is the manager of the What, Where, and When. Whereas, Configuration Management is the How. If these two key teams are not working in concert with each other, there is no chance for success.
June 8, 2007 at 5:15 pm |
Well stated Release Guru!
While I don’t mind being a hero, it gets tiring sometimes. And, it also tends to be a fairly thankless job.
For some odd reason, when a production release goes perfectly (99.999% of the time), no one seems to notice much. But that .001% of the time when a release gets botched or backed out, whoa! Boy does everyone seem to notice!
July 2, 2007 at 2:09 pm |
don’t we mix release management with readiness? readiness is looking from customer perspective if organization is ready to change. maybe release management is looking from technical perspective on putting solution into operations?
July 14, 2007 at 9:38 pm |
I am trying to understand RM, but I am having a hard time.
I understand the role of Change and Configuration Management. No probs there.
But I am still unclear as what does RM and Project Management do exactly. For example, I understand the roles of operational and functional testing and user acceptance testing. However, what I do not understand is that. Under which management are they done?
Then there is the build testing, what is this exactly and who actually does it, PM or RM?
Is RM just the policy and plan writer and PM actually puts all the RM policies in practice according to the plan and RM checks that PM has complied?
PLEASE HELP!!!!!! I need to understand this ASAP as I am sitting for an exam in a few days.
Thanks in advance. (By the way, your site is very helpfull – THANKS!).
February 2, 2009 at 3:36 am |
Hey
Can anyone tell me hat might be questions in an interview for a Release Manager position.?
August 11, 2009 at 6:25 pm |
I’m curious on how people differentiate between the release management process and the SDLC. I’m assuming the SDLC is embedded in the release management process…example:
Release Mgmt might be:
Planning -> Construction -> Verification -> Production
Would SDLC fall under construction?