Release Management Best Practice Handbook: Building, Running and Managing Effective Software Release Management and Support - Ready to use supporting documents bringing ITIL Theory into Practice
Authors: Gerard Blokdijk, Ivanka Menken
Venue:  (2008)

Release Management is the relatively new but rapidly growing discipline within software engineering of managing software releases.As software systems, software development processes, and resources become more distributed, they invariably become more specialized and complex. Furthermore, software products (especially web applications) are typically in an ongoing cycle of development, testing, and release. Add to this an evolution and growing complexity of the platforms on which these systems run, and it becomes clear there are a lot of moving pieces that must fit together seamlessly to guarantee the success and long-term value of a product or project.This book covers every detail, including some missed in other books. This thorough book provides a clear roadmap to designing, implementing and operating Release Management. The author leaves no key process out and completely covers everything from initial concept to measuring support effectiveness and process improvement.The book starts with an initial strategy that is focused on planning Release Management services that are completely aligned to requirements and are based on a mission statement. This business-oriented approach is refreshing and will keep IT grounded in the real reasons for Release Management. More importantly is the process for careful selection of services to provide. An overly ambitious set of service goals will kill a Release Management implementation early in its life by offering too much before there is a stable Release Management process in place. This book is realistic and lays the foundation for a successful implementation. The section on the actual design of the Release Management structure provides insights and information that can be applied to a large number of solutions. Since Release Management will be organized in accordance with requirements and unique mission statements, this section of the book is like a catalog of patterns. It has excellent tips on how to best structure Release Management to meet requirements and mission. The information on accurately estimating staffing requirements is consistent with industry best practices and something that, believe it or not, is often overlooked when Release Management is established. This book gets into the meat by thoroughly covering the processes that are essential to running Release Management. There are many topics that stand out as both unique [to books of this genre] and reflect best practices by the best-run Release Management initiatives. Examples are change control, disaster recovery and vendor management. These topics show that the author not only considers business alignment, but also cross-functional alignment within IT.Professional resources and underlying technology are provided in detail. This book contains an in-depth coverage of operational requirements for Release Management once it has been implemented. It hits all of the critical success factors, such as performance metrics, service level agreements, communications and internal evaluations. It even has a chapter on marketing, which is something that is important but not often done by most Release Management initiatives. This proactive approach to keeping users (your customers) informed of new services, accomplishments and tips is excellent and will go a long way towards attaining high customer satisfaction scores - not to mention proving the value of the Release Management to IT and business management.You will find this book to be one of the best for planning and implementing world-class Release Management.