Stream Step

One of most challenging things about improving a complex release management process is getting started. Here is a great article on improving release processes from http://www.cio.com - http://www.cio.com/article/print/440101 The authors point out in section 3:

"3. Get lightweight processes in place. Test them early and review them regularly."

"If there is one single guiding principle in engineering (or reengineering) a process, it is to do a little bit, review your results and then do some more. Repeat this cyclic approach until you get the results you want.

Lightweight processes are those that do not require lengthy bureaucratic approvals or endless meetings to get agreement. They usually require only the minimum acceptable level of inputs and outputs. What they lack in bulk and bureaucracy, they make up for in response to change and popular adoption!

Underpinning this approach is the thorny issue of documentation. You need to record what you did and how you did it. Otherwise, what do you review and how do you improve?"

As part of this effort the authors put in place a commercially available portal product - based on a wiki-portal approach.

But as we have found with many of our customers - Portals are generic tools for documentation and sharing. Release management has a specific set of challenges which are onlypartially covered by the portal approach.

1. Documentation - a documentation portal is only as good as the updates to it. If people forget to update it then it quickly loses currency and usefulness. In the day-to-day release process - portals can drift out-of-sight and out-of-mind - resulting in the checklist entry "Make sure you update the portal with the DB dumpfile location."

2. Process control - portals are primarily stateless repositories of lists and documentation. They don't enforce or assist with process control. And portal workflow modules, where they exist, suffer from the core problems of workflow - brittleness and maintenance complexity. In fact, "coded workflows" are antithetical to the notion of a "lightweight process".

3. Metrics - related to the lack of process control, portals don't produce metrics that assist in targeting subsequent improvement work. At best managers can use forms to measure inputs to the process in the form of requests for release activities - but the underlying process detail is lost from view. Frequently this detail - what happened and when - is where the real process improvement opportunities reside.

4. Automation - finally the goal of release management is to deliver flawless releases as efficiently as possible. Automation is a key part of achieving this goal. Portals just don't engage release automation - it's not what they were designed to do.

Conclusion

Putting in place a portal for your release team is a great first step to improving your release processes. If you don't have a way for your team to share release documentation then a portal can make a huge difference. But if like many companies today, you already have a release team portal and yet you still see room for improvement in your release processes, you should consider a lightweight release management solution like StreamStep - SmartRelease. A solution purpose built for today's release management challenges - Release Management... Simplified.