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    Release Management Workflow – External

    Release management is an important part of Disciplined DevOps, and Figure 1 depicts the high-level workflow that release management is involved with. One interesting aspect of this diagram is that it shows that many IT delivery teams, which may be following different lifecycles or even tailored versions of one of the Disciplined Agile® lifecycles, potentially feed production ready releases into the release management process. In some organizations you may have a separate release management team doing this work. Other organizations, particularly those that are well on the way to adopting a DevOps strategy, will often choose to have the delivery teams themselves do the release management work via a “you build it, you release it, you run it” mindset. For now, our focus is on the activities surrounding release management, not on the potential organizational structures to support it.
    Release Management

    Figure 1. The external workflow of release management.

    The following table summarizes the workflows depicted in the diagram.

    Process Blade

    Workflow with Release Management

    Business Operations

    Release management safely deploys consumable solutions into your operational environment(s).

    Continuous Improvement

    Your continuous improvement efforts should result in improvement suggestions gleaned from other teams that release management can learn from. Similarly, your release management efforts may also generate learnings that other may benefit from.

    Data Management

    Your release management efforts will generate create data, such as what was released, when it was released, where it was released to, and how much effort was required that can be used for decision making purposes elsewhere. Similarly, your release management efforts will benefit from intelligence gleaned from other activities within your organization. For example, if a platform is currently down (perhaps it is being upgraded), then you would likely be blocked from deploying into that environment until it is available.

    Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

    Delivery teams will produce new releases of the consumable solutions that they are working on when they believe they are ready to be deployed.

    Because delivery teams work in different manners, it implies that release management professionals (if any) will need to be sufficiently flexible to work with these teams in manners that reflect their chosen strategies.

    Enterprise Architecture

    Roadmaps & Models

    The enterprise architects will produce roadmaps and models that will reflect the current operational environment as well as the expected direction that it will head in. This information will be used as input into decisions regarding any technology strategies to support release management activities.

    Governance

    The governance team will provide guidance to all teams, including anyone performing release management activities.

    IT Operations

    Release management safely deploys consumable solutions into your operational environment(s).

    Related Resources