Release Management is the final hurdle to overcome. If not done properly, it will invalidate everyone’s hard work and result in nothing more than delivering a poor customer experience.

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Release Management
The political process
(A practical approach)
Dr Don Page
Marval Software

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If not done properly, it
may invalidate all the
hard work done by
everyone and result in
nothing more than
delivering a
Poor Customer
Experience
Release Management is the final hurdle to overcome
“The
Political process”

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Traditional
approach
Requirements
Design
BuildOperate
Optimize
Deploy
Application
M
anagem
ent
Application
Development
Service
Management
* Release
Involvement

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Marval Release process statement
• The process of safely, with
minimum risk, releasing any
change - related to people,
process or technology, which
may affect the delivery of
underpinning SERVICES to
the production environment
and its customers.

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Release Checklists
• For each release, a Release checklist is
used and signed off to ensure nothing is
lost, forgotten or ignored.

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Standard Change
Process
Raise RFC
Classify/Prioritise
Approve
Schedule
Build
Test
Release
Review
Close RFC
Update CMDB
Approve

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
Marval
Change and Release
Process
1. Activities in each
process step and
procedure are
documented and
checked for
completeness
2. With clearly defined
roles and
responsibilities
Time

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Confirm business benefit and expected outcomes
2. Define planned release date
3. Agree scope of release and which change request(s) are to
be included (large releases treated as project)
4. Define required approvals, including authority to back-out
5. Assess possible service outage period and workload
estimates
6. Identify any increase in resources/capacity required (e.g.
staff, disk space, access rights, CPU size, network
bandwidth, etc)
7. Is it to be a one-hit release, or spread over an elapsed time
period (rollout preparation)
8. Identify which staff and resources are required to test
9. Agree scope of testing plan
10. Agree scope and schedule of support training plan
11. Agree scope and schedule of customer training plan
12. Agree scope of communication plan
13. Agree how release will be categorised
14. Identify and agree monitoring period and success
criteria/KPIs after installation
15. Agree standard and emergency-change policy, procedure,
authorisations and escalation

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Raise parent Release/Change request in ITSM tool
2. Create Installation instructions concatenate details from
included change request(s)
3. Document new features and functions
4. Create test plan
5. Create back-out plan
6. Create support training plan
7. Create customer training plan
8. Create communication plan
9. Identify amend/create related processes and
procedures (for both support and customers)
10. Identify amend/create support related processes and
procedures
11. Identify amend/create emergency change related
processes, procedures and authorities
12. Identify amend/create customer and 3rd party related
processes and procedures
13. Verify any identified known errors are input/available in
the ITSM tool

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Test Release plan
2. Test back-out plan (if applicable)
3. Test Release LOCAL (if required include
customer representative in testing and
signoff approval)
4. Check feature and functions correspond to
the documentation provided.
5. Check-off ALL ‘expected’ content exists
6. Confirm procedure for recording, classifying
and relating incidents relating to the release
in the ITSM tool

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Identify release schedule possible conflicts
with other changes and business critical
periods
2. Confirm training schedules still valid (Plan
Release)
3. Confirm release schedule(s) to required
persons (support staff, customers, etc)
4. Confirm monitoring period after release is
still valid
5. Identify who needs to be involved and
when
6. Are any special arrangement required ?
• Out-of-hours activity
• Remote or onsite access required
• Staff overtime re-imbursement
• Customer involvement

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Confirm everything identified in planning
stage still valid (Plan Release).
2. Confirm to affected customers
• Date/time of release
• Possible business impact or service outage
• Process to report/escalate any problems
• Their approval to release is still valid
3. Conduct training/awareness for affected
staff on new release. e.g.
• Servicedesk
• Trainers
• Consultants
• Administration team
• Customers (if practical)
• 3rd parties

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Do IT
2. Monitor release (confirm success criteria /KPI
attainment)
3. Hold internal release review
• Update change release record in ITSM tool
• Record failed release elements as separate related
incidents
• Notify Servicedesk
• Notify affected customers and stakeholders
• Update CMDB and related information
REL-230
INC-234
INC-235
INC-236

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REL-230
CHG-220
CHG-221
CHG-223
Department: accounts
Location: Kettering
Status: scheduled
Assignee: Alan Bain
Department: accounts
Location: London
Status: Work in progress
Assignee: Mark.Kovarski
Department: Sales
Location: Swindon
Status: completed
Assignee: Greg Pritchett
CHG-224
Department: Sales
Location: Bristol
Status: completed
Assignee: Raj Patel
Description: PC Rollout Release
Status: Work In Progress
Assignee: PC Support
Release Progress
to-date

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Release Review
Plan Release
Release Development
Acceptance Testing
Rollout Planning
Rollout Preparation
Release Deployment
1. Confirm expected business outcomes achieved
2. Obtain customer satisfaction signoff
3. Review effectiveness of communications plan
4. Identify any process, procedure improvements and
record in ITSM tool as an Suggested Service
Improvement (SSI)
5. Identify areas identified for improvement
• Report on workload/time estimates vs. actuals
6. Document identified service improvements to sell
back to the business
7. Make identified improvements (NOW)

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Conclusion
A good release process will ensure
improved quality, reduced risk, with
nothing being LOST, FORGOTTEN or
IGNORED

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