Stabilize Release and Deployment Management

Lack of control over the release process, poor collaboration between teams, and manual deployments lead to poor quality releases at a cost to the business.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Manage risk. Release management should stabilize the IT environment. A poorly designed release can take down the whole business. Rushing releases out the door leads to increased risk for the business.
Quality processes are key. Standardized process will enable your release and deployment management teams to have a framework to deploy new releases with minimal chance of costly downtime further down the production chain.
Business must own the process. Release managers need oversight of the business to remain good stewards of the release management process.

Impact and Result

Be prepared with a release management policy. With vulnerabilities discovered and published at an alarming pace, organizations have to build a plan to address and fix them quickly. A detailed release and patch policy should map out all the logistics of the deployment in advance, so that when necessary, teams can handle rollouts like a well-oiled machine.
Automate your software deployment and patch management strategy. Replace tedious and time-consuming manual processes with the use of automated release and patch management tools. Some organizations have a variety of release tools for various tasks and processes to ensure all or most of the required processes are covered across a diverse development environment.
Test deployments and monitor your releases. Larger organizations may have the luxury of a test environment prior to deployment, but that may be cost prohibitive for smaller organizations. If resources are a constraint, roll out the patch gradually and closely monitor performance to be able to quickly revert in the event of an issue.

Stabilize Release and Deployment Management Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should control and stabilize your release and deployment management practice while improving the quality of releases and deployments, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Stabilize Release and Deployment Management – Executive Brief

1. Analyze current state

Begin improving release management by assessing the current state and gaining a solid understanding of how core operational processes are actually functioning within the organization.

2. Plan releases and deployments

Plan releases to gather all the pieces in one place and define what, why, when, and how a release will happen.

3. Build, test, deploy

Take a holistic and comprehensive approach to effectively designing and building releases. Get everything right the first time.

4. Measure, manage, improve

Determine desired goals for release management to ensure both IT and the business see the benefits of implementation.

Release Management

Improve the speed and success rate of your deployments.
This course makes up part of the Infrastructure & Operations Certificate.

Course Modules: 5
Estimated Completion Time: 1.5-2 hours

Featured Analysts:
Sandi Conrad, Practice Lead, I&O Research
Ken Weston, Senior Research Analyst, I&O Practice

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Academy: Release Management | Executive Brief

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About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

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