Importance Of Release Management Process In Software Projects
IT Release management plays a very crucial role in every software assignment/ project as it is concerned with the delivery of a high quality product to the end users and IT organizations. Release management is also a significant part of quality management as it is concerned with the provision of high-quality software to the users. Free and open source software is known by its highly iterative development model in which the new development releases are generally made accessible very frequently. Owing to its frequency of the development process in certain projects, there are certain issues with consistent releases for the end users.
Researches have indicated that in general the term “release management” have been used to refer to three separate kinds of releases. These kinds differ in nature with regards to the audience they reach and cater to and the initiatives needed to offer the release. The three kinds are as follows:
· Development releases are aimed at developers who are interested in working on the projects or a set of experienced users who require innovative technology
· Most user releases are based on a stabilized development tree. These releases offer relevant new functionalities and features along with bug fixes to the end users and are mostly well experimented
· There are minor releases as updates for present user releases, for instance addressing security concerns or critical IT defects
In an IT enterprise with multiple software and hardware assets, the changes take place in the release of improved and enhanced versions of software and hardware. Today leading solution providers specializing in Agile methodology have introduced advanced release management process solutions keeping in mind the following objectives:
· Planning hardware and software implementation
· Designing and deploying processes for installation and distribution of changes in the IT systems
· Security of production platforms from any kind of disruption
· Allowing the holding of the requirement management tool and test management tool concerns together in respect to each release
· Establishing a publish quality release note to highlight all the new improvements, such as requirements, issues and bug fixes
Advanced release management processes help to supervise testing, development, implementation and assistance of software releases. The process also puts together detailed technical know-how of the software development life cycle and the IT infrastructure library deployment initiatives with conventional project management.