ITIL release management aims to build, test, and deliver capabilities to provide services. Release management approaches include acting as super project managers, gatekeepers, or DevOps facilitators. Automation improves both speed and control across the software development lifecycle. Effective release managers form process teams, use common automation, and refine processes based on post-mortem results to break down silos between development and operations.

1. ITIL Release Management
and Automation
Eric Minick
eric@urbancode.com
@EricMinick
Blogs.urbancode.com
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2. The Plan for Today
• ITIL:
– A brief introduction
– The generic problem of implementing ITIL
• Release Management:
– Rise of release management
– ITIL release management concepts
– Varying approach to release management
• Automation:
– The end of speed vs. control
– Adding value across the SDLC
• ITIL Release Managers Acting as DevOps Facilitators
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3. IT Infrastructure Library
• Public framework of “Best Practice” for IT Service
Management
v1: 1989 – 1995, v2: 2000 – 2004, v3: 2007
Updated for 2011
v3: Service Lifecycle
Service Strategy,
Service Design,
Service Transition,
Service Operation, http://www.best-management-
Continual Services practice.com
Improvement
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4. The generic problem in ITIL
• “The guidance in the ITIL publications is applicable
generically”
– Organizational needs vary
– Little guidance on implementation
• Hard to understand the generic language
– “A service is a means of delivering value to customers by
facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without
the ownership of specific costs and risks.”
– “Service Management is a set of specialized organizational
capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of
services.”
Quotes from “An Introductory Overview of ITIL V3”,
The IT Service Management Forum
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5. The generic problem in ITIL
• “The guidance in the ITIL publications is applicable
generically”
– Organizational needs vary
– Little guidance on implementation
• Hard to understand the generic language
– “A service is a means of delivering value to customers by
facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without
the ownership of specific costs and risks.”
– “Service Management is a set of specialized organizational
capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of
services.”
Quotes from “An Introductory Overview of ITIL V3”,
The IT Service Management Forum
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6. Loose translation from ITIL 2011 Glossary
• Configuration Item: a unit of stuff
• Release: all the stuff (not just software)
• Deployment: moving stuff to the live
environment
• Release Window: agreed time to move stuff
• Build Environment: a controlled environment
to assemble stuff
• Definitive Media Library (DML): only place to
get software stuff for a release
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7. Agenda
• ITIL:
– A brief introduction
– The generic problem of implementing ITIL
• Release Management:
– Rise of release management
– ITIL release management concepts
– Varying approach to release management
• Automation:
– The end of speed vs. control
– Adding value across the SDLC
• ITIL Release Managers Acting as DevOps Facilitators
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8. The rise of release management
Increasing Need better
Faster pace
complexity management.
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9. Increasing architectural complexity
Service Oriented
Web Apps
Client
Server
PC Apps
Mainframe
Past 90s-2000s Current
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10. More complex team structures
Reversed Conway’s Law
– Complex architectures require complex
organizational structures
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11. More complex team structures, ctd
• Implicit system knowledge scattered across
geography and companies
– Distributed development
– Offshore development
– Outsource development
– Outsourced IT operations
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12. Faster pace of software development
• Business agility is about being able to respond
in the market
Dotted line represents market. Solid line our applications
based on imperfect guesses of market direction.
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13. The ITIL releasemanagement concept
• Service Transition, 4.4: Release and Deployment
Management
– “Release and Deployment Management aims to build,
test and deliver the capability to provide the services
specified by Service Design and that will accomplish
the stakeholders' requirements and deliver the
intended objectives.”
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14. The ITIL releasemanagement concept
• Service Transition, 4.4: Release and Deployment
Management
– “Release and Deployment Management aims to build,
test and deliver the capability to provide the services
specified by Service Design and that will accomplish
the stakeholders' requirements and deliver the
intended objectives.”
• ITIL 2011 update
– Release Management is called upon from Project
Management to perform the planning of build, test
and deployment of Releases.
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15. Approaches to release management
Super project management
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16. Approaches to release management
Gate Keepers
16 Image source: http://www.denverpost.com/travel/ci_7524577

17. Approaches to release management
Post Office
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18. Approaches to release management
DevOps facilitators
Image source: http://westlawinsider.com/legal-research/headnote-of-the-
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day/westlaw-headnote-of-the-day-march-30-2011/

19. Agenda
• ITIL:
– A brief introduction
– The generic problem of implementing ITIL
• Release Management:
– Rise of release management
– ITIL release management concepts
– Varying approach to release management
• Automation:
– The end of speed vs. control
– Adding value across the SDLC
• ITIL Release Managers Acting as DevOps Facilitators
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20. Automation: speed vs. control
• False dichotomy resulting from
– Risk-tolerant vs. risk-adverse mindsets
– Different bonus plans
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21. Automation: speed vs. control
• False dichotomy resulting from
– Risk-tolerant vs. risk-adverse mindsets
– Different bonus plans
• Automation improves
– Speed
– Control
– Visibility
– Auditability
21
http://www.streetfire.net/video/126-top-gear-self-driving-bmw_180380.htm

22. Complexity demands automation
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23. Manual bug fix & retest process
23 http://www.urbancode.com/html/resources/white-
papers/Build_and_Deployment_Automation_for_the_Lean_Economy/

24. Automation in bug fix & retest process
24 http://www.urbancode.com/html/resources/white-
papers/Build_and_Deployment_Automation_for_the_Lean_Economy/

25. Tie Automation to your RM Approach
• Super project management
– Use it to track what’s where.
• Release management as gate keepers
– Enforce gates automatically. IE: Tie execution of
deployment to Stage to results of automated
tests.
• Release management as DevOps facilitators
– Automate handoff elements and push for
increased consistency.
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26. Agenda
• ITIL:
– A brief introduction
– The generic problem of implementing ITIL
• Release Management:
– Rise of release management
– ITIL release management concepts
– Varying approach to release management
• Automation:
– The end of speed vs. control
– Adding value across the SDLC
• ITIL Release Managers Acting as DevOps Facilitators
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27. Release management spans the SDLC
• Functional
test • Deploy to
Dev • Build
• Unit test QA • Performance
test
Ops Staging
• Deploy to
Production
• UAT
Silos Stink
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28. Don’t be a silo. Be a Silo Smasher.
Release
Managers
Dev Ops
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29. Use common automation against silos
• Common builds
But we’re soo
• Common IaaS different, we need our
own thing
• Common deployments
• Shared ownership of
release pipeline
dev system
build UAT sign-off staging prod
test test
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30. Use common automation against silos
• Common builds
But we’re soo
• Common IaaS different, we need our
own thing
• Common deployments
• Shared ownership of
release pipeline
dev system
build UAT sign-off staging prod
test test
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31. Process Transformation
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32. Form a process team
• Release Management chairs this team
• Other members:
– Stakeholders across the SDLC: Devs, QA, Ops, Sec..
• Team meets
– Regularly (quarterly or in line Dev Sprints)
– For Post-mortem’s of any outage and releases
• RM incorporates results into official SDLC
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33. The cardinal sins of post mortem results
• Our action item is never, ever, ever “Be more
careful”
• It’s almost never “document _____ better”
• Avoid “Release less often”
* For more on good and bad post-mortems, check out “How to
Make Failure Beautiful: The Art and Science of Postmortems” by
Jake Loomis in Web Operations (ed. Allspaw& Robbins)
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34. Start Updating Process: Ex. Refinements
• Because errors creep into the official builds…
– Unify the CI and official builds and test nightly
• Because a new app wasn’t compatible with
the live environment…
– Involve sys-admins in early design phases
– Setup test envs that more closely match Live
• Deployments failed due to manual error
– Increase automation in deployment
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35. In Summary…
• ITIL RM should be DevOps facilitation
• Embrace the grand charter for RM in ITIL
• Recognize process expertise and automation
pieces already available across IT (Dev & Ops)
• Co-own the process, but chair a team
– ITIL Continual Services Improvement
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36. References
http://urbancode.com/resources
• Enterprise CD Maturity Model
• Death to Manual Deployments!
• Lean Build & Deployment Automation
• Deployment Automation Basics
Blogs.urbancode.com
Twitter.com/Urbancode
Facbebook.com/UrbanCodeSoft
Slideshare.net/Urbancode
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37. Release Management & Automation Products
• uBuild
– Build automation and CI for the hard problems
• uDeploy
– Deployment and release management
• uProvision
– Spins up virtual environments. Integrated with
VMWare, Azure and EC2
• uRelease
– Release & Environment management / planning
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38. Next Webcast
uRelease public demo
- Nov 27th 13:00 US ET (GMT – 5)
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39. Questions?
Slides will be up at: Slideshare.net/Urbancode/
More resources: Urbancode.com/resources/
Eric Minick
eric@urbancode.com
@EricMinick
Blogs.urbancode.com
39