ITIL Release and Deployment Management
Streamline your ITIL release process to enhance planning and deployment, minimize errors and maximize benefits
Simplify IT release management deployment and minimize interruptions
Simplify IT release management deployment and minimize interruptions
New software releases have several moving parts—and successful release management deployment involves seamlessly coordinating them. While this can quickly get out of hand, SolarWinds Service Desk, a capable ITSM software with release management functionality, will allow you to combine changes related to similar systems into a single release. By unifying these related changes, you can streamline deployment and reduce the need for outages. Additionally, you can integrate Service Desk with your CMDB to help ensure correct configurations across your entire system, bringing your employees and clients a smooth delivery experience with minimal interruptions.
Monitor changes occurring within a single system
Monitor changes occurring within a single system
Change management is about planning and implementing modifications, while ITIL release management refers to coordinating software releases ensuring changes integrate seamlessly and safely.
Service Desk makes managing changes straightforward, offering documentation and visibility to minimize disruption and maintain consistency. Easily gain insights from the software’s audit logs, visualize updates in the user-friendly dashboard, and check approvals during deployment.
Controlled infrastructure using configuration management database (CMDB)
Controlled infrastructure using configuration management database (CMDB)
CMDB software can provide visibility into your organization’s infrastructure, allowing you to track and manage IT assets and their dependencies. Once you understand the relationships between your IT assets, you can resolve any incidents faster, make more informed decisions, and address problems before they occur. As a result, CMDB software can greatly simplify software release management, enabling you to tackle issues quickly or avoid them altogether.
Visualize updates throughout the release management process
Visualize updates throughout the release management process
Use ITIL release management to check approvals made during deployment
Use ITIL release management to check approvals made during deployment
Managing a software release is a team effort that requires input from several parties. Every change made needs multiple approval tiers— this goes beyond just IT teams. HR and business departments are also often involved in software releases, which can make release management more complicated.
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What is release management in ITIL?
According to the Information Technological Infrastructure Library (ITIL), release management, also known as software release management, involves planning, scheduling, and controlling software releases. ITIL release management includes testing software to ensure its updates work in a live environment, and it can bridge the gap between your new IT projects and your ongoing operations, allowing for a smooth launch. Overall, release management is a very holistic process encompassing a release from end to end and requires coordinating several projects and changes within the release package.
What is deployment management?
Deployment management is very similar to release management. In fact, it’s part of release management and concerns software delivery. After the software has undergone rigorous testing and debugging processes to minimize errors, it is ready to be deployed—and that’s where deployment management comes in.
With proper deployment management, you can improve and shorten the deployment process while also cutting costs. You’ll also be able to leverage insightful metrics for data-driven decision-making and establish a centralized management environment offering increased oversight and transparency.
Here, too, release management tools can help. For example, SolarWinds Service Desk can greatly simplify and streamline deployment and release management, taking some pressure off your shoulders.
How does release management work?
Release management is a must, no matter how large or small your new release is. By coordinating software development, building, and testing content, and deploying it, you can complete releases more efficiently and minimize disruptions.
Blending governance and oversight, proper release management ITIL can ensure new releases are completed efficiently and have little-to-no disruptions. Not only will you need to define what content you will release, but you’ll also need to consider how and when you will release it.
Additionally, building and rigorous testing of the release components are pivotal stages, wherein the integrity and functionality of the release are thoroughly scrutinized. Notably, live deployment marks the culmination of this process, requiring a seamless transition from the development environment to the production environment.
Throughout the software release management process, your team will need to collaborate with others. They may need to work closely with IT project teams, operations staff, and even business leaders to ensure technical operations are in sync with your organization’s strategy and marketing initiatives, and release management software can help ensure everyone is on the same page.
What are the stages of release management in ITIL?
In ITIL, there are a few key steps, including:
- Release planning: Effective planning is crucial as it lays the foundation for organized and successful execution. Here, you’ll want to define the scope and content of your upcoming release. Outline the requirements and functions for the software, determine which changes will be part of the release, reflect on potential risks, consider the chain of approval, and put together a schedule for building and deployment.
- Release build and testing: Next, it’s time to get to work on building and testing the release. Use a staging environment as close to the production environment while testing your changes and updates. This will allow you to see changes without impacting the current version that existing users currently rely on. Your quality assurance teams can then review your staging environment and test new features and additions. You may also have a dark launch by making the release available to a small group of beta testers.
- Release deployment: After you’ve built and tested updates, you can move onto deployment. You’ll want to check that the release is ready for deployment, verify the deployment order, deploy your release packet to the live environment, and notify all involved parties.
- Early life support: Once your release package has been deployed, you’ll want your release, software development management, and incident management teams to work together to address any operational issues and ensure peak performance.
- Release closure: In this stage, your release activities will formally come to a close. You can send your project teams any metrics, outcomes, and feedback.
Throughout this entire process, a release management tool can be used to increase transparency and make operations more efficient.
How do CMDB, change management, and release management affect each other?
CMDB, change management, and release management are all integral components of IT service management —and they significantly impact each other.
Since a CMDB keeps track of the relationships between configuration items, assets, and their dependencies, it can provide insight into which a change or release may impact assets. This will enable you to notice and avoid issues in the first place, keep an eye on areas likely to be impacted by a change or release, or resolve problems caused by a new change or release faster.
Change management then relies on software release management to effectively bundle changes for smooth deployment, minimizing any disruptions to production, while release management requires change management to approve and track changes throughout the release cycle and needs a CMDB to assess the impact of changes.
ITIL release management process best practices
To ensure your ITIL release lifecycle management process is as effective as possible, you’ll want to:
- Evaluate your existing release management processes: One of the first things you should do before a release is reflect on your current release management ITIL process. Think about where the touch points are, where validation and verification occur, and where you regularly run into roadblocks.
- Document everything: Proper documentation is essential, as it will allow all team members to understand what is happening at any given time.
- Keep your staging environment as close to the live environment as possible: You can’t properly test releases and updates in your testing environment if it isn’t a direct replication of your live environment. By keeping your staging environment as close as possible to your live environment, you’ll be able to catch issues better and fix bugs.
- Automate processes: When done correctly, automation can save everyone time and energy. You can’t and shouldn’t automate everything, but you might consider automating things like quality assurance, feature releases, and release schedules. After all, manual releases require time and may be prone to human errors exacerbated in fast-paced release cycles. By automating certain tasks, you can give your team more energy to focus on more important tasks.
- Train team members: While it can be tempting to rely on one experienced person who is very familiar with deployments or solving problems because they’re so efficient, this can be detrimental if they call out sick or leave the company. Instead, provide sufficient training for everyone on the team and ensure they all have a chance to perform each role throughout the IT release management lifecycle.
- Invest in the right release management tool: Release and deployment management isn’t easy. There are lots of moving parts and many individuals involved, which means keeping track of everything and keeping all parties informed along the way can be tricky. Enter release management tools. Using a quality IT release management tool can simplify the ITSM release management process and provide increased visibility to everyone involved.
What are the advantages of implementing ITIL release management?
One of the primary benefits ITIL release and deployment management offers is the ability to mitigate risks effectively throughout the software delivery lifecycle. By enforcing rigorous testing, ensuring alignment with business needs, and optimizing performance, release management helps teams identify and address potential issues early on, reducing the chances of costly disruptions in the production environment.
Additionally, ITIL release management can help your organization consistently meet deadlines since the structured framework of release management helps keep teams focused and accountable, ensuring they meet project milestones and deadlines. This predictability in delivery is essential for maintaining customer satisfaction and organizational credibility.
Release management also helps align development and business goals. By establishing clear requirements and criteria from the outset, release management highlights the importance of meeting business objectives and developing consistent testing parameters. This alignment ensures IT initiatives directly contribute to the organization's broader success.
It can even help optimize the entire development and release process, as teams can work more efficiently and effectively when following the streamlined release management process.
What is release management in ITIL?
According to the Information Technological Infrastructure Library (ITIL), release management, also known as software release management, involves planning, scheduling, and controlling software releases. ITIL release management includes testing software to ensure its updates work in a live environment, and it can bridge the gap between your new IT projects and your ongoing operations, allowing for a smooth launch. Overall, release management is a very holistic process encompassing a release from end to end and requires coordinating several projects and changes within the release package.
“SolarWinds Service Desk is acting as a multiple solution platform for us. We’ve gone from six different platforms to one. It brings our departments much closer together.”
Gilad Vinitsky
CTO
The BLOC
A ITIL release management tool to simplify your life
Service Desk
Automate user service request management from ticket creation, assignment, routing, and escalation.
Use built-in reports to track ticket status, technician performance, and customer support needs.
Leverage a built-in help desk knowledge base to create and maintain KB articles and promote end-user self-service for common issues.
