Volume 9 - Number 8 - August 2011
Release Management and Deployment Essentials is one of the most popular themes in the CM Journal. Each year our talented CM experts share their experiences and lessons learned with a focus on what works and what doesn't. This month is no exception as Chaim Kirshen gets us started with his advice to start with centralized distribution when implementing release management fundamentals and dbMaestro's Uri Margalit considers business conditions in release management and deployment essentials. We welcome Iniyan Charles's own personal description of Aspects of Release Management and Deployment and I will relate a few of my own experiences in Behaviorally Speaking.
We'll raise the tempo a bit with Patrick Burma's Agile Rapid Iterations and Shawn Edmondson tells us about taking DevOps Mainstream while remembering the essential verification and validation in Dan Joe Barry's article on Testing Release Management in the Cloud. Configuration management is essential for the success of any software or systems development effort and, of course, release management and deployment are essential to CM. You should be considering how you can share your own views on practices that are essential by submitting articles for the CM Journal and participating in our forums, groups and community blogging!
Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
raiello@acm.org
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Managing and Tracking Distributables
by Chayim Kirshen
Many organizations treat release management as a nonexistent field or an “also-ran.” Reproducibility is near the bottom of the list of concerns, let alone thinking about other parts of the discipline. But, release management fundamentals still apply regardless of the size or type of your organization. By starting with centralized distribution, an organization can make massive strides towards managing releases.
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Release Management and Deployment Essentials
by Uri Margalit
As a result of software becoming more embedded in business, firms are discovering that the pace of change is now limited by how quickly they can react to shifting business requirements and deploy new releases of their supporting applications. Additionally, as technology evolves, software application architecture is becoming increasingly complex, shifting to distributed and multi-tier models. This architecture poses multiple challenges when deploying new releases.
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Aspects of Release Management
by Iniyan Charles
Release management is a function that helps deliver value to the customer and ensures the on time delivery of what was planned while meeting customer expectations, time and time again. The plan needs to be repeatable with success, and everything needs to be trackable and traceable. Risk assessment is important; it is essential that we handle external dependencies and tackle unexpected problems.
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How Do Agile Rapid Iterations Improve Software Quality?
by Patrick Burma
Rapid iteration in software development means performing short, repeated development cycles based on a set pattern. A two-week development cycle is an example of a rapid iteration. Using iterative software development cycles that incrementally build the system is one of the primary principles of agile software development.
In agile, the primary benefit of rapid iteration is the ability to review and validate user requirements. By using short development cycles, you add the ability to become “agile” and change those requirements in future iterations based on ongoing customer input.
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Taking DevOps Mainstream
by Shawn Edmondson
From time to time, we tolerate business processes that don’t work as well as we’d like. It’s easy to complain about a process that is slow, clunky, or just plain broken until you try to build one yourself. It’s simply easier said than done.
So, how broken must a process be to spawn an entire social movement? That was the state of application release in 2009 when the DevOps movement emerged. DevOps pioneers realized that the gap between application development and operations was killing their businesses and making IT look incompetent.
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Testing Release Management in the Cloud
by Dan Joe Barry
For many organizations, cloud computing has transitioned from a hyped buzzword into a reality in regards to their business operations. Many more enterprises are realizing the benefits of remote hosting IT services rather than local IT management, especially as managing and operating IT networks and services is not getting any easier.
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Behaviorally Speaking - Release Management and Deployment Essentials
by Bob Aiello
Managing the release-and-deployment process can be very difficult to accomplish in high-risk environments. It's also precisely where you have the greatest potential for reward. I have had some spectacular successes as a release-and-deployment manager and no shortage of painful moments, too. Sometimes, it seemed that I had the magic to tame the most savage release scenario, and other times I couldn't move the needle and show any significant improvement at all. I have learned a lot from these experiences, and this article discusses what I consider to be release management and deployment essentials.
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