Agile Release Management Best Practices

1. Agile Release Management Best Practices
for Salesforce Admins

2. Housekeeping
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3. Presenters
Emcee/Moderator
Tori Bealer
Director of Events Marketing
Your Instructor
Stephen Crane - Product Manager at Prodly
Stephen is an experienced product manager focused on driving vision and
roadmap for SaaS businesses. He has delivered multiple concept-to-launch
software introductions in both mid and large SaaS companies; he is continually
focused on combining the best of people, data, and design to deliver positive user
experiences and business outcomes. He currently oversees Prodly AppOps
flagship product and is focused on making the management of complex cloud apps
built on Salesforce easier for admins.

4. Agenda
● What is agile release management and objectives of implementing it
● Key benefits to business operations
● Dos and don’ts of agile
● How to get started with agile release management

5. Agile release management
Release management is the process of planning and
scheduling the deployment of a software version
through different stages and environments (orgs).
Source control involves managing changes to code
versions pushing into a branch to be routinely tested
before it is released into a production environment.
Release Manager/Coordinator is responsible for
planning and scheduling all the items that comprise a
release; coordinates with Product Owners, Quality
Managers, Change Managers, DevOps Team.
Agile is a methodology used to release changes in
time boxed “sprints” iteratively.

6. Release Management for Salesforce

7. Benefits
● More frequent and smaller product releases
● Shorter response times to changes in requirements and/or priorities
● Reduced post production support due to inherent Quality Assurance
● Fewer defects
● Reduced costs

8. Best Practices - Your Do’s
1. Setup your sandbox structure to scale, using specific orgs for each
stage in your workflow; be aware of each org type storage limits &
cost
2. Treat configuration data with the same rigor as meta-data and code
3. Consider using a version control system as your source of truth for
change management
4. Have a rollback strategy to protect production org
5. Consider adopting agile framework to release more frequently
6. Routinely test throughout the configuration lifecycle
7. Build a culture of collaboration and invite others to participate in
release reviews
8. Make collaborating virtually fun (“virtual high fives”)

9. Best Practices - Your Don’ts
1. Don’t make changes directly in production
2. Don’t push changes without securing proper
review & approval
3. Don’t discount the importance of change
management process and adopting version
control system
4. Don’t forget to communicate to stakeholders
regularly about your release sprints &
schedules
5. Don’t forget to integrate into existing
developer workflows

10. Getting started: Agile release management for
low-code apps

11. New type of data
Objects
Fields
Apex Code
(e.g. triggers)
Validation Rules
Meta
Asset
Contract
Opportunity
Order
Order Product
Quote
Quote Line Item
Quote Document
Subscription
Transactional
Accounts
Contacts
Master
Custom Action
Block Price
Localization
Price Book
Price Book Entry
Price Dimension
Price Rule
Product
Product Feature
Product Option
Product Rule
Quote Template
Quote Term
Solution Group
Reference

12. Release management for data
Deduplication
Sophisticated duplicate resolution Automatic remapping of relationships

13. Comprehensive Solution
13
AppOps
Specialized admin tools to
democratize maintenance
and unblock IT
Late 2020
License utilization, audit &
compliance, change
performance analytics
Late 2020
Specialized ETL engine with
built-in version control. Custom UI
for easy visualization of pending
changes. Cross platform support.
Specialized testing tools for
CPQ, Field Service and other
complex apps
Coming in April!
AUTOMATING THE FULL LIFECYCLE
of low-code Salesforce Apps

14. Setting yourself up for success
❏ Develop a release management game plan to navigate the changes and
deployments across your orgs
❏ Implement an agile methodology so you can release more frequently; here are
some basic agile concepts you can implement right away
❏ Setup your sandbox structure by using specific orgs for each stage in your
application development workflow (NOTE: Be aware of each org type storage
limits & cost)
❏ Choose a version control system (VCS) to use as your source of truth for org
change management [PRO TIP: You can check with your IT team to see which
VCS they are already using for metadata. Some great ones include GitHub or
BitBucket]
❏ Define a rollback strategy to protect your production org from unforeseen
issues and faulty deployments
❏ Communicate the plan & invite others to participate in release reviews
❏ Look for a tool that helps you deploy reference data seamlessly to production

15. Next Steps

16. Upcoming Prodly Webinars
CPQ Gotchas and Best Practices with
Derek Black
April 21st, 2020
10AM PST
Learn how to avoid painful implementations as we reveal common
pitfalls and mistakes. Hear best practices for maintaining CPQ, Billing
and other complex Salesforce apps to get the most out of your
investment.
Register at prodly.co/webinars

17. Get a custom demo at prodly.co/custom-demo
on Salesforce AppExchange & G2

18. Q&A