When it comes to the process of release management, it should never be built in isolation. The processes intertwine in a complicated way with the strategy, objectives, governance, change management, and other aspects of the business. They have to be created jointly with everyone associated with the process so that everyone consents on the same.
What are the goals of release management?
A release management process’s primary objective is to keep a uniform set of reliable, repeatable, and resource-free set of processes to attain optimal value for the business and resources. Many companies focus on operating short business projects that yield high returns. The value chain of application delivery needs to be optimized so that there are no bottlenecks that surface when the business value needs to be delivered.
What are the main tenets of release management?
When it comes to the process of release management in a software development project, it comprises of the following tenets-
- Management of the sandbox
- Version control
- Procedures and tools for deployment
- Structure of the team
- Strategy for change management
An insight into the process of release management
Companies should ensure that the process for release management is reliable and mature. There should be a process in place for the task. Even if the process is wrong, it is better than to embrace no process at all. These faulty processes can be corrected; however, organizations that lack specific aspects of change management and the government will find it difficult to incorporate any new approach.
The process of release management must be consistent for them to succeed
There are times when big companies embrace different and several processes for the task of release management in the same production.org. For instance, for one division, they will use a single set of processes, and for another department, they could embrace another entirely different kind of process for the task. Businesses need to standardize and streamline processes across many sets of end-users. They use the same foundation, resources, and platform for enabling business operations.
The above results in a failure of governance for the business. Note, different sets of users need to know what the others are involved in. For instance, several developers should know when modifications are made to the same object.
From the point of governance, the release management process needs to have clear visibility among different processes
Flosum is a native app for Salesforce that offers continuous integration and an end-to-end solution for release management. It is built on the Salesforce platform and can be connected to several production orgs different in nature.
When it comes to governing the release management process for Salesforce, the developers associated with the process should have accountability for every action and a uniform kind of operation for the whole team that supports Salesforce’s ecosystem.
Mitigating risks
Based on the company’s progress for different features, the IT department and the business must continuously check the risks of pushing changes into the production systems. Experts in release management say that customers who work on complex and lengthy projects that are large. Customers should embrace a methodology that is agile as it will have the following advantages-
- Boosts the productivity of development.
- Can continuously deliver business value
- Reduce codes for the work that is in progress
When software developers work on a running project for a long time, it gets integrated into the other components of the present system. They need to work continuously with the other software developers to not over-write codes or tasks. This reduces the project’s success, and it is here that customers should embrace a better approach for the task. With agile development technologies, they can concentrate on delivering business value in small chunks to the end-user. In this way, they can focus on the small parts of the project with most of the business value.
How can a company align its release with a release under Salesforce?
It is frustrating for several organizations to release their individual codes while Salesforce upgrades changes. They often face the following questions-
- How should the changes be tested?
- Should these changes be released before or after the new release?
- How the business value of these changes is different compared to the business value of the features introduced under the Salesforce platform?
- What features does the business intend to undertake from the new release?
- How many end-users will be affected by the internal release?
- What is the number of sandboxes available for testing these internal changes through these new features under Salesforce?
Many customers release these features early by decreasing the release’s scope and deploying these changes before they reach the sandbox.
The team involved in the project is generally responsible for complex and lengthy projects. They have many interdependencies for the ecosystem that affect integrations with the back-end ERP system that is varied and long. They involve several resources that spread across different teams that affect the other methods too.
Structure of the team for release management processes
During the planning phase, its release should be disintegrated into many divisions like projects, enhancements, fixes, and trust. For instance, when fixes have to be carried out, this can be done by the production support teams. These enhancements can either be done by project teams and those involved in production support. The members of the team should determine the changes that should be made to the line of code. It could also depend upon how long it generally takes to improve.
Again, there are cases where some customers break the team members under a project under different categories like a self-service business team for lightly configuring the changes, for instance, assigning layouts, managing page layouts, manage the data fixes, managing data, and more. This can be done to different users based on their permissions. So, in this manner; a business’s release management can be carried out by a business effectively.
