Strengthening The Ends - Software Release Management
Your home's foundation and roof define the integrity of your house. The foundation is the starting point and the roof is the cap at the opposite end. The same is important with software release management.
The first thing one does when developing an initial release management process is to get the middle part working. Get the code from Qual to Prod so that customers are using the new release. That's critical, but it's just a first step, you'll need to take a step forward and back - concentrate on both the beginning (foundation) and at the end (roof) of the systems engineering process.
The beginning. Coordinating releases can be difficult with many competing priorities, business opportunities and technical deadlines. We can beat the competition with new functionality but if we don't upgrade our OS the vendor will cut off their support. The best tool a release manager has - is knowing these needs early. How early? Once the money is committed to the project and before a single line of code is written. The same week that letter arrives from Sun or IBM to the System Admins - "You must upgrade our product or you'll be out of support on 1/1/18". Early involvement by release management results in strengthening beginnings.
The end of the cycle is equally important. This phase begins when the lead project manager sends an email with a subject like "Everyone, we are IN PROD, Yahoo! Or, that email subject can say, "unfortunately we've reverted the entire release, customers are now able to access systems again". Either way - this is the trigger for the release management "end of cycle" work. What worked? What didn't? How did we end up here? Do we need adjustments to our corporate release strategy? Did we follow our corporate release strategy? In addition to these qualitative questions, it's time to review our quantitative release data as well. Good closeout by release management results in strengthening at the tail end.
Strengthen your foundation and your roof. Wishing you successful releases!