The release management scheme of then ITIL makes the system work. Adoption of the change management without the implementation of the release management defeats the entire system.
The release management of the ITIL calls for proactive planning and also managing the releases for successful implementation in to the production.
A platform is provided for considering the non technical and the technical aspects of release after considering the impact of the changes in the current environment. Also, an opportunity is provided for documenting and capturing all the implementation and the testing procedures.
The ideals of most of the release management comprise of the processes that are common to many of the high performing IT companies. These kind of processes addresses the early cycles of the infrastructure before the same is put into production and assure that the system of the release management is perfectly functioning according to the expectations.
The saddest part is that it is a last place of investing of many organizations. The best part is that the benefits get instant realization.
Creation of a team
The release management team has to be created from the top most senior operations IT staff and the directives need to be given to them for delivering the proactive release process. The main object should be to work on the developing stable integration and software releases that can be deployed in the production. Due to the early involvement in the lifecycle, they will be in a position to resolve the defects in case of lower costs.
Plan and design
The main objective is to build the process and mechanism for deploying the most stable from of configurations into the production. In the phase of planning as well as designing, the team needs to work for minimizing the unique number of configurations and for increasing the life span before the same needs to be replaced or changed.
This will, in turn, benefit the organization as it enables the automated rebuilding of the process rather than repairing and there will be a lot of savings on the time and the resources.
Build and configure software and hardware
The release management team doesn’t build the systems; they actually document and engineer them. Simply by following the created document during design phase, the junior members of the staff are in a position to replicate the bare metal builds by minimum assistance from senior members of the staff. When the building and configuring is done by the other resources, it will free them to work on fresh projects.
Test and release
After the build is configured, the next level is to test the same in a non productive environment. This will in turn match the environment of the production quite closely for catching any of the potential issues before the release.
Simply by following steps that are outlined by release management team, the junior staff could be utilized for this and will only require the other resources, in case the unexpected result comes. Also, by isolating the infrastructure from live environment will reduce the risk of the outages or any other unexpected failure on the system of production.
Keep the rollback plan in proper place
Even when the testing of the release is done in the environment of non production, there is a possibility of happening of something unexpected when the same is deployed. Without a roll back plan in proper place, you are unnecessarily creating a risk.
Implementation of the release management process in the organization will expect the goal for delivering the highest form of return on the investment by reducing the complexity and also creating the automated form overbuilding process for minimizing the need for the firefighting.
