Understanding Release Management: Key Concepts and Importance
The word āreleaseā tends to bring images of the yearās biggest movies to mind. And, I think, thatās why everyone is so quick to misunderstand release management. They see it as an event, a grand affair with all hands on deck - not as a process that needs careful routine and planning.
It seems like a movieās big release is only the tip of the iceberg - and thereās a lot more behind the scenes than we realise. It isnāt easy to explain why release management means what it does. But, on some level, you can kind of see what it shares with other releases.
A movie can flop or fly depending on how well itās been managed and tested for launch. In other words, there are systems in place that ensure your website or app can work smoothly even as new features or changes are introduced. It also means scheduling updates at a time when users will be less inconvenienced and properly preparing teams for these changes.
Somewhere along the line, something can slightly go wrong and thatās why we have release management in place. Iām fairly certain youāve already seen how unplanned changes can impact site performance if youāve ever worked with digital products for even a short while. But seeing can sometimes mean identifying where things could be different - and knowing whether your site is down because of planned maintenance or because someone somewhere made a rather inconvenient mistake.
All this said - my own experience tells me that no two companies do release management alike. The best companies Iāve worked with have had extremely organised processes for planning releases - but even then they encountered problems with their routines every now and again. The key thing to remember is nearly always that changing routines isnāt a sign of failure or poor planning; it simply means your company is learning from its mistakes and working towards something better all the time.
Essential Routines for Effective Release Planning
A lot of people think release planning is just a list of things to tick off. And thatās probably why so many releases end up being absolute chaos. Itās not so much about what you need to do, as it is about how you do it and who is doing it.
One of the first things you need to sort out with release management is getting everyone on the same page. That means clear communication across teams and a shared understanding of objectives. It sounds simple but rarely works like that because people are usually so caught up in their own bits and pieces. To bring teams together you need someone to take charge, break down silos and coordinate action.
This becomes especially important when youāre working with different departments, contractors or teams in different countries and time zones. Iāll admit, it can all get quite overwhelming at times. There are parts of this process that seem a bit like youāre trying to herd cats.
But the good news is kind of that thereās plenty of software to help you plan and track progress across teams. This helps with transparency and accountability too because everyone knows who is doing what and how far along they are. Sort of.
A final word on planning - things will go wrong no matter how well prepared you are. The best way to deal with that is by having regular meetings and check-ins so everyone knows where things stand at all times.
Streamlining Communication Among Development Teams
People think that working with a distributed team means either over-communicating or under-communicating - thereās never a middle ground. There seems to be this idea where if you communicate too much, youāll lose sight of what matters and if you communicate too little, you risk miscommunication. I Believe as is often the case, the actual answer is somewhere in between.
You want to build a communication rhythm that is arguably regular and meaningful. The effectiveness of communication within a company depends on the environment you operate in and this differs from business to business. It comes down to the size of your company, how your teams are structured, and the way in which your employees interact with one another; itās a pretty complex situation if you look at it from a birdās eye view.
So, then, what can you do to make sure everyone who needs to know whatās happening is actually kept up-to-date. My team at Fresh Consulting likes doing daily standups in small groups and sharing project schedules that indicate every memberās involvement and role. Some other ways could be to encourage asynchronous communication so that anyone can respond at their own convenience and use wikis or shared notes so that people have access to them whenever they need.
What Iām saying is - as simple as it sounds, communication among development teams is not something you should overlook. And considering how teams are slightly spread all over the world these days, we need to be even more mindful about how connected everyone feels.
Implementing Automated Testing for Stability
Automated testing is often mistaken as the magic bullet. Tick that box, set up some scripts, and youāre good to go. Iāve seen plenty of developers who focus on quantity over quality - hundreds of automated tests checking all sorts of things in painstaking detail. The trouble is, half of them donāt even run anymore, a quarter are out-of-date, and the handful left over catch one typo a month.
The reality is that automated testing is fairly time-consuming to set up initially and it can create more work than it saves if youāre not careful about what you automate. Sort of. Automated tests are built for repetition and thoroughness.
Thatās the sort of thing they can do better than any human being without getting tired or distracted. But a lot of people make the mistake of automating everything that doesnāt change just because itās easier than updating the rest.
Thereās also this sort of expectation from upper management sometimes that automated testing will prevent all bugs from going live ever again but thatās just not true. Automated testing is only ever as good as what you tell it to test for so if you miss something, it wonāt automatically cover it for you. It seems like so it helps to be honest about exactly what your test coverage percentage is and how often you revisit those test cases to keep them updated.
If your stakeholders know what to expect from your automated tests, it becomes easier to see them as a second pair of hands - not a failproof end-all-be-all for quality assurance. This means everybody knows where to look first when things slip through the cracks and who needs to be responsible for fixing it.
Monitoring and Feedback Loops Post-Release
I used to think the job ended at deployment. Everyone does, I guess. Thereās this finality to a go-live: you cross that finish line and exhale, sometimes with celebratory cupcakes or beers, and then the team fractures ā some move on to new projects while others race around tying up admin. But itās never finished, is it.
Post-release checks require as much scrutiny as pre-deployment ones. Little accidents can happen in the week after a release, despite that green tick reassuring you everything was fine when you pushed your code in. Bugs that werenāt picked up or missed during UAT suddenly come into focus, causing a ruckus. This could be down to something small like an API response from a third party being different from expected or maybe a server update not playing nice with front-end deployments.
More or less. To prevent and deal with all of these types of potential issues post-release monitoring is incredibly important. The way I see it, itās all about leveraging different tools (grafana and prometheus for example) so your site is seldom constantly being monitored from afar.
If something goes wrong - somewhere far away - you want to know about it straight away instead of waiting for your users to tell you 4 hours later. Monitoring also offers visibility on what happened exactly at the time of release, helping teams understand whether there are any improvements they need to implement for future releases. Pairing this with feedback loops after each release helps teams conduct effective retrospectives too, ensuring continuous improvement as deployment cycles continue indefinitely into the future.
Continuous Improvement: Learning from Past Releases
I see it all the time - people think that constant improvement is about being critical and examining everything with a microscope. But it is not. It is about learning from your past work, taking accountability, and finding ways to do better. This mindset helps you move away from blame and defensiveness and toward open communication and collaboration.
The thing about this sort of routine is kind of that it can be difficult to implement. People are used to pointing fingers and blaming others for mistakes or bugs in releases. Sometimes, it seems like only product managers or project leads are responsible for examining what went wrong during releases. But it should never be a one-person job.
Continuous improvement after every release - good or bad - must involve everyone from the team. I know that creating a culture where this sort of growth is normal is rather difficult, I think that you can always start somewhere. Even if it's one meeting after every release where people make suggestions on how things could have gone better, or someone volunteers a way they believe processes could be improved, that's enough.
All in all, continuous improvement is the only way teams and companies can keep up with the times and create processes that help their people do their best work.