5 Practical Ways To Efficient Change And Release Management

2. The revolutionising digitisation and technical transformation in the application development world have made two factors mandatory. These two factors are necessary to sustain, grow and enhance your IT business in the competitive world- fast releases and continuous change. Therefore irrespective of the type of software development you venture into, an efficient release plan and environment management tool is necessary. For maintaining quality CI/CD pipelines and delivering value to users rapidly, your DevOps and IT teams need to optimise change and release management plan consistently to enhance operational efficiency. Change management denotes any updating or changing process, not strictly limited to DevOps and IT. However, it’s crucial that you determine and understand organisational change management best practices and implement them while working towards a successful release management pipeline. With greater flexibility and change accommodation, you can address the production bugs faster and smoothly push your release through the application development lifecycle. In this article, we’ll explain the release and change management process and also highlight how these two factors function harmoniously to benefit your DevOps and relevant IT teams everywhere. Change And Release Management Plan Explained Change Management In the DevOps and application development realm, change management signifies your team’s capability to manage configurations efficiently, execute automated tests, alert on-call responders and mitigate known and unknown risks across all applications and operations.

3. Release Management Release management plan encompasses the technical part of the application development process- drafting release planning, code development, quality testing, preparation, and deployment of new features and services to production environments. Why Release and Change Management Needs To Work Together? Software engineers and IT operations collaborate and equally contribute to the release management process for delivering quick and quality services/products to your clients. Change management is primarily concerned with the people side of change and how your people will function with changing approaches and tools. While release management includes specific technical methodologies and processes for delivering efficiently delivering product features to production. Your release management plan (involving creating new work processes and implementing evolved technologies) might not be successful and achieve its full potential unless you bring your people along. Your organisational financial success significantly depends on how effectively your people have embraced the change. Therefore, change management involves implementing a structured approach and specific tools to lead the people side of change and achieve the desired outcome. With the correct release and change management protocols and the accurate IT environment management tool, you can rapidly release and deploy your application without compromising quality.

4. 5 Practical Ways To Efficient Change And Release Management Determine Why You Need The Change And How To Do It Implementing a change in your release management plan without understanding the benefits can create confusion. The functioning of your IT operation teams is determined by two elements- reliability and stability in the SDLC. Therefore, for your people to readily embrace the change, you’ll need to explain how the new techniques function, how the implementation plan is strategised and why it’s important for your organisation. Outline The Scope And Budget For The Plan Implementing any small or big changes in your organisation requires a plan. You need to develop a detailed layout that outlines who and how gets affected by the change and the financial expenditure associated with the change. Perform a cost-benefit analysis to understand and measure if the costs involved in the change are worth the benefits you’ll get to enjoy. While financial budgeting is necessary, you cannot overlook the human cost. • Will your teams’ productivity get affected due to the changes? • Will you enjoy better business outcomes based on the changes? • How the new change can negatively or positively affect your clients? Weigh these factors while implementing change. Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide To Release Management Tools

5. Have Standard And Proactive Alert, Observation And Response Plan A detailed monitoring system and alert throughout your complete release management process can help you define a proactive incident management strategy. So, when things go south or complexities arise in production, both your DevOps and IT operations teams understand the context and have the correct tools to address the issues. Define A Communication Plan With real-time collaboration and greater visibility across the release management workflows, eliminating bottlenecks, fixing bugs, and delivering a high-quality customer valve becomes fast and smooth. Efficient Tracking Strategy Accurate tracking, incident management event, and release management metrics reporting can help you improve how you implement change in the future. With comprehensive reports and tracking details, you can understand the effects of any previously introduced change and start drawing a table of what worked well and what didn’t.