As organizations evolve, they often need to upgrade their IT infrastructures regularly, part of which involves software releases. Such software releases, whether simple or complex, are plagued with common challenges like lack of communication between different teams, scheduling conflicts, and absence of central control. Failing to adequately address these challenges may result in underdeveloped or failed releases. This can cause a backlog of pending releases and an increase in outages leading to costly downtime that could have otherwise been prevented.
Helping businesses deliver a seamless customer experience and ensure zero downtime has always been a key aspect of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.
ServiceDesk Plus and IT Release Management enable you to establish a clear governance structure through release roles, automated workflows, and customizable templates. We ensure that changes are released effectively through management that works in tandem with change management to offer transparency and central control. And that’s exactly what ServiceDesk Plus’ new capability provides.
IT Release Management refers to the process of planning, designing, scheduling, testing, deploying, and controlling software releases. It ensures that release teams efficiently deliver the applications and upgrades required by the business while maintaining the integrity of the existing production environment.
IT software upgrade releases have never been easier and more secure from risks that impede your organization’s day-to-day operations, making for a seamless and effective release management process. API-level integration enables IT teams to resolve issues much faster, increases the productivity of IT personnel, and improves end-user satisfaction, the process of resolving tickets still has to be done manually.
There are a few steps to IT release management. They are;
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Request: Release management starts with requests for new features or changes to existing functions. There’s no guarantee that all requests made will eventually translate into a new release. Each request is evaluated for its rationale, feasibility, and whether there’s a way to fulfil it by reconfiguring the application version already in production.
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Plan: A robust plan ensures the release team stays on track and that requirements are satisfied. Create or reuse a workflow or checklist that can be referred to by stakeholders throughout the release process.
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Design and Build: This is the programming phase where the requirements are converted to code. The release is designed and built into executable software.
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Testing: Once the release is deemed ready for testing, it’s deployed to a test environment where it’s subjected to non-functional and functional testing (including user acceptance testing or UAT). If bugs are found, it’s sent back to developers for tweaking and then subjected to testing again. This iterative process continues until the release is cleared for production deployment by both the development team and the product owner.
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Deployment: The release is implemented in the live environment and made available to users. It entails educating users on the changes and training them on how to operate the system in the context of the new features.
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Post-Deployment: Post-deployment, the release moves to the support phase where any bugs are recorded that will eventually necessitate a request for changes.
For an IT release to be deemed successful, it must attain the following objectives:
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It’s deployed on time.
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It’s deployed within budget.
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It has little to no impact on current users.
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It satisfies the needs of current and new users, technological advances and/or competitive demands.
How can ServiceDesk Plus help?
- Simplify IT upgrades: Integrated with the Change Management module, you can associate changes to releases, thereby carrying over all the necessary documentation entered in the change ticket.
- Provide an Integrated calendar view: All scheduled releases and changes are highlighted in both modules through the integrated calendar view, ensuring that no scheduling conflicts arise.
- Offer Predefined release workflows: The graphical drag-and-drop canvas for release workflows enables you to create custom workflows for various types (Major, Minor, or Emergency) of releases.
- Stay in control of software release processes: Define and manage different types of releases (Major, Minor, Emergency, etc.) with custom workflows.
- Establish a clear governance structure: Associate roles with predefined templates to manage releases in a standardized manner.