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Release Management

The political process (A practical approach)

Dr Don Page

Marval Software

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If not done properly, it

may invalidate all the

hard work done by

everyone and result in

nothing more than

delivering a

Poor Customer

Experience

Release Management is the final hurdle to overcome

“The Political process”

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Traditional

approach Requirements

Design

BuildOperate

Optimize

Deploy

Application

Managem

ent

Application

Development

Service

Management

* Release

Involvement

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Marval Release process statement

• The process of safely, with

minimum risk, releasing any

change - related to people,

process or technology, which

may affect the delivery of

underpinning SERVICES to

the production environment

and its customers.

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Release Checklists

• For each release, a Release checklist is used and signed off to ensure nothing is lost, forgotten or ignored.

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Standard Change

Process

Raise RFC

Classify/Prioritise

Approve

Schedule

Build

Test

Release

Review

Close RFC

Update CMDB

Approve

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

Marval

Change and Release

Process

1. Activities in each

process step and

procedure are

documented and

checked for

completeness

2. With clearly defined

roles and

responsibilities

Time

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Confirm business benefit and expected outcomes

2. Define planned release date

3. Agree scope of release and which change request(s) are to be included (large releases treated as project)

4. Define required approvals, including authority to back-out

5. Assess possible service outage period and workload estimates

6. Identify any increase in resources/capacity required (e.g. staff, disk space, access rights, CPU size, network bandwidth, etc)

7. Is it to be a one-hit release, or spread over an elapsed time period (rollout preparation)

8. Identify which staff and resources are required to test

9. Agree scope of testing plan

10. Agree scope and schedule of support training plan

11. Agree scope and schedule of customer training plan

12. Agree scope of communication plan

13. Agree how release will be categorised

14. Identify and agree monitoring period and success criteria/KPIs after installation

15. Agree standard and emergency-change policy, procedure, authorisations and escalation

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Raise parent Release/Change request in ITSM tool 2. Create Installation instructions concatenate details from

included change request(s) 3. Document new features and functions 4. Create test plan 5. Create back-out plan 6. Create support training plan 7. Create customer training plan 8. Create communication plan 9. Identify amend/create related processes and

procedures (for both support and customers) 10. Identify amend/create support related processes and

procedures 11. Identify amend/create emergency change related

processes, procedures and authorities 12. Identify amend/create customer and 3rd party related

processes and procedures 13. Verify any identified known errors are input/available in

the ITSM tool

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Test Release plan

2. Test back-out plan (if applicable)

3. Test Release LOCAL (if required include customer representative in testing and signoff approval)

4. Check feature and functions correspond to the documentation provided.

5. Check-off ALL ‘expected’ content exists

6. Confirm procedure for recording, classifying and relating incidents relating to the release in the ITSM tool

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Identify release schedule possible conflicts with other changes and business critical periods

2. Confirm training schedules still valid (Plan Release)

3. Confirm release schedule(s) to required persons (support staff, customers, etc)

4. Confirm monitoring period after release is still valid

5. Identify who needs to be involved and when

6. Are any special arrangement required ? • Out-of-hours activity • Remote or onsite access required • Staff overtime re-imbursement • Customer involvement

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Confirm everything identified in planning stage still valid (Plan Release).

2. Confirm to affected customers • Date/time of release • Possible business impact or service outage • Process to report/escalate any problems • Their approval to release is still valid

3. Conduct training/awareness for affected staff on new release. e.g.

• Servicedesk • Trainers • Consultants • Administration team • Customers (if practical)

• 3rd parties

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Do IT

2. Monitor release (confirm success criteria /KPI attainment)

3. Hold internal release review

• Update change release record in ITSM tool

• Record failed release elements as separate related incidents

• Notify Servicedesk

• Notify affected customers and stakeholders

• Update CMDB and related information

REL-230

INC-234

INC-235

INC-236

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REL-230

CHG-220

CHG-221

CHG-223

Department: accounts

Location: Kettering

Status: scheduled

Assignee: Alan Bain

Department: accounts

Location: London

Status: Work in progress

Assignee: Mark.Kovarski

Department: Sales

Location: Swindon

Status: completed

Assignee: Greg Pritchett

CHG-224 Department: Sales

Location: Bristol

Status: completed

Assignee: Raj Patel

Description: PC Rollout Release

Status: Work In Progress

Assignee: PC Support

Release Progress

to-date

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Release Review

Plan Release

Release Development

Acceptance Testing

Rollout Planning

Rollout Preparation

Release Deployment

1. Confirm expected business outcomes achieved

2. Obtain customer satisfaction signoff

3. Review effectiveness of communications plan

4. Identify any process, procedure improvements and record in ITSM tool as an Suggested Service Improvement (SSI)

5. Identify areas identified for improvement

• Report on workload/time estimates vs. actuals

6. Document identified service improvements to sell back to the business

7. Make identified improvements (NOW)

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Conclusion

A good release process will ensure improved quality, reduced risk, with

nothing being LOST, FORGOTTEN or IGNORED

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