Working with Release Management

The release process encompasses planning, designing, building, configuration and testing of hardware and software releases to create a comprehensive release strategy. Release Managers and Administrators can view releases.

Release management is responsible for designing, testing, and installing defined changes in the live environment. While Change Enablement manages the process of change, release management manages the deployment of those configuration items that are implemented by Change Enablement. A release consists of rolling out new or updated software or hardware (configuration items) required to implement approved changes. The implementation of new hardware or software releases combine the controlled process of configuration management with the communication and preparation of Change Enablement. A release is thus initiated as part of the Change Enablement process and works with configuration management.

Release management is used to distribute and manage the rollout of software and hardware across the entire IT infrastructure. In an IT environment, the goals of release management include the successful implementation of new software releases, hardware installations or upgrades, and other IT infrastructure changes that affect business operations. For example, upgrading the email server. Proper software and hardware control makes sure that licensed, tested, and version-certified software and hardware is available for use in the organization.

In Neurons for ITSM, release management provides you with all the capabilities for managing a release while still leaving the process flexible enough for you to incorporate business rules and validations to tailor the release process to fit your organizational needs.

Release management is responsible for:

•Planning the rollout of software.

•Designing and implementing procedures for the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems.

•Effectively communicating and managing expectations of the customer during the planning and rollout of new releases.

•Controlling the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems.

The following release types are supported in Neurons for ITSM:

•Major Release: Software releases and major hardware upgrades, normally containing a lot of new functionality. A major upgrade or release usually supersedes all preceding minor upgrades, releases, and emergency fixes. A major release might affect most users in the organization.

•Minor Release: Software releases and hardware upgrades, normally containing small enhancements and fixes, some of which may have already been issued as emergency fixes. A minor upgrade or release usually supersedes all preceding emergency fixes.

•Emergency Release: Software and hardware fixes, normally containing the corrections to a small number of known problems.

Release management encompasses the planning, designing, building, configuration, performance testing, and acceptance testing of hardware and software in order to create release components ready for implementation in a production environment. Release describes an authorized change or collection of changes to an IT service. In Neurons for ITSM the scope of a release can be:

•Standalone: All components of the release are tested, distributed, and implemented together. A standalone release might be a minor release. It does not contain other related releases

•Master: The rollout of configuration items brought about by a single major change might be broken into a master release for the entire release project and its subsets or phase releases. A master release might be a major release type. The other releases under it are related releases.

For example, upgrading the entire organization to Windows 7 might be a master release project while one phase might be setting up users' computers and changing their BIOS settings (if necessary).

•Phase: A subset of a master release. For example, a software rollout can be done in phases for each location.