Release and Deployment Management

‘Change is inevitable’ is not only heard in religious sermons but also a lot all around the IT industry. The default human tendency is to avoid change and the same is also true with any IT organization. A solid Release and deployment Management process makes transition smoother and less stressful.

Deployment Management is a process which helps implement the releases to the current specific service / product in use with proper release versions on the live environment and test for bugs if any. Release and Deployment Management process ensure that the steps involved while setting up release and deploying them in the live environment are carried out in a way to minimize incidents and bugs and that the eventual output is as desired by the end user.

Release and Deployment is about planning, so as to ensure there are none – or minimum – undesirable events during and after the change.

Risk involved for not having a Release and Deployment Management process in an organization:

• Not having a standardized procedure that meets the business goals in accomplishing the rollout plan
• Unable to achieve a substantial increase in the overall functionality
• Having copies of release versions and difficulty in tracking changes
• Not having the ability to define release units

Need for Release and Deployment Management process:

There is a possibility we may run out of disk space(even on the internet) if we were to enumerate each and every real world experiences to stress the need for the Release and deployment process, but some of the most prominent ones are as below: 

• Avoid and minimize incidents and problems which eventually leads to change which creates another loop
• Keep track of releases and its versions e.g. major / minor release and its version 2.3.4 etc.
• Maintain a checklist for testing purposes
• Assure that the releases are incorporated as per the change requested into the test environment and deployed the same into the live environment with the appropriate version
• Ensure communication to the users at each stage is maintained
• Training is given to the users whenever needed and that there are no obstacles in the process
• Ensure that technical and non-technical aspects are considered
• Ensure that each release package consists of a set of related assets and service components that are compatible with each other

And most importantly the CIO’s, CTO’s, Project Managers can sleep peacefully at night.

Release and Deployment process by Manage IT lays strong emphasis on planning, testing, and approving the test results, documenting, training and communicating any of the IT change process. The IT change management process is smoothly implemented by using the Release and Deployment process.

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About Author:

Dimpy Thurakhia is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at dimpy.t@spluspl.com