Most failed software release are the result of several failures in the software development, testing, release approval, deployment, and operation phases. Teams are often able to ship code quickly, but they may suffer from slow releases, inconsistent environments, unexpected failures in production, and have no idea how to roll them back.
A release roadmap will help your team identify gaps in your software release process, standardize your software delivery process, mitigate the risks of deploying your software, and ensure that your software releases are predictable. It's not just about how fast you can release your software. It's also about designing and standardizing your release process to enable your software to be released quickly, with the highest quality, security, and reliability possible.
In their research on how the integration of AI in production systems can impact a range of individual productivity metrics, Google published the "2024 State of DevOps report" from Google Cloud. They found that while AI integration in production improved the individual productivity metric, it also had negative impacts on software delivery throughput and system stability.
So in a way, improved individual productivity doesn't necessarily translate to improvements in software delivery systems. Google Cloud 2024 DORA Report This is important. How is this impacting Engineering managers, Release managers, DevOps engineers and Quality engineers? This is now a question: "How can we improve our software release management processes without adding unnecessary complexity?" What is release management improvement? Release management improvement is when you change how you plan, test, approve, deploy, and monitor software.
It includes standardizing, automation, risk mitigation, performance monitoring, and continuous improvements. The following are the key steps of a release management plan:
- Release planning
- What are we going to release?
Why are we doing it?
What is our release dependent on?
When will we be ready?Release development
How you plan for, build, package, and deploy your software.Release testing
What kind of functionality, performance, security and compatibility tests do you run?Release readiness
Do you have quality gates in place? Do you have approval processes? Do we have any documentation? Do they have rollback?Release deployment
How do you deploy your release into production, following the right processes?Release monitoring
How are you monitoring the health and performance of your software? What do you need to change?
The steps you choose in your release management roadmap depend on the size of your company. A small software as a service (SaaS) company will likely use a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to automate almost all of these steps. A regulated enterprise, however, will require additional security testing, proofs of compliance and formal approval processes.
The key message remains: "Every release is made with a process that can be measured and appropriate to the level of risk".
Top comments (0)