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What is Release Management?

A release is a set of configuration items that are tested

and introduced into live environment. The main objective of Release Management is to guarantee successful roll out of the releases into Production Environment including system testing, integration testing, regression testing etc.

Objectives of Release Management

Creating and maintaining the release schedule.
Monitoring the progress of the changes targeted for

the current release. Verifying that the release is ready to go to Production without any roadblocks. Arranging for the implementation and handling over the release to IT Operations for deployment. Communicating with the users, associated stakeholders and considering their expectations from the release.
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Release Management Activities

Release Policy and Planning Coordinating testing needs of the different projects in the release. Managing and controlling release environment changes Maintaining release inventory Track the changes in and out of the release region Risk planning Track the progress of the release as per release timeline and communicate release status to stakeholders and release participants Coordinate release activities with other Enterprise platforms Implementation Planning Coordinate implementation and validation activities with the teams on turnover day Monitor post implementation issues during release warranty Track the off-cycle release changes getting implemented in production; review the impact of any off-cycle change on the changes being implemented with a scheduled release. Inform the projects in the release about any impacts due to an off-cycle change. Creating and reporting release metrics to business and IT stakeholders

Release Management Activities

Release Policy and Planning: Includes the planning of the releases for entire year. Test Environment setup : Each release pipeline would at least consist of a
unit testing region, system testing region, UAT region.

Test Environment Data Refresh : This involves determining and

developing a list of databases which would need to be refreshed with recent production data in a test environment before the environment begins to be utilized for release process. This should be done by a separate environment management team who could do this refreshes as required. The Data Refreshes should be planned after the entire release plan has been finalized for the year.

Release Milestones

Release Change Assessment Form due Development complete milestone Milestone for code to be in system testing region System Integration testing completion date Scope lockdown for release Code lockdown for release (Code Freeze) Milestone for code to be in user acceptance test region User acceptance testing completion date Go No Go decision date Regression testing completion date Release ready for deployment Production implementation of the release.
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