What is software release management? Know the best practices.

Frequent downtime and typical bugs can negatively impact your business.

Providing the best user experience with your software is essential to maintain your business growth in the long run.

Thus, implementing software release management is a great way to tackle such challenges. The process includes different cycles and practices focusing on various software development factors. 

Let’s check in detail how you can improve your software with the help of release management.

What is software release management? 

Software release management is a process that developers use to create new software or modify existing software.

The process includes:

• Planning and scheduling software releases
• Defining responsibilities within the software release process
• Assigning the release process to different teams
• Automating the release process 
• Reporting the performance of software releases

However, there come a few challenges while practicing release management, such as

• Avoiding compromising the product stability 
• Making improvements in the speed and quality of release deployments
• Delivering high-value features to customers

All these challenges can easily be overcome by following the practices discussed in the blog.

Moreover, many reasons make businesses practice release management that helps them improve software building efficiency.

Why practice software release management? 

Here are some advantages that IT companies take from software release management:

1. Helps in creating predictable and reliable products 

Manual deployment is painful and includes risks associated with publishing and releasing software.

Therefore using management tools such as Visual Studio team services or Jenkins can help you automate release management by making your software more predictable and reliable in terms of performance and functionality.

However, using the MVP model, in addition, is also the best way to increase the chance of your software succeeding in the market.  

2. Allows better configuration management

The companies can systematically manage, organize, and control changes in the codes, libraries, and entire software development life cycle elements.

However, the main goal of improving configuration is to minimize the mistakes and increase productivity to faster deploy software with minimal errors.

3. Improves software quality

Since the release management involves unit testing, execution, and analyzing the code quality, the testing team can report immediately to the development team in case issues come within the code quality.

4. Quicker market time 

The following practices in release management, such as building an automated build and adding automated unit tests, offer quicker time to market to the software products and companies.

However, implementing release management and continuous delivery processes may consume time at the start but gives better returns in the long run. 

5. Delivers better values to customers

Shifting from traditional to digital transformation ultimately offers the best delivery value to the customers. 

The release management team understands the business needs by taking customer feedback and performing market research, which helps them build an actionable development plan.

6. Offers scalable risk management

Various release management practices such as risk awareness and management help businesses audit the process for modifying products based on the market and customers’ requirements. 

Therefore by practicing a repeatable risk management process, a business can develop a highly efficient management plan by minimizing risks involved during software development by proper management.

7. Improves deployment efficiency 

Having excellent efficiency in software development is another plus point. Also, the release management process gives priority to the following factors:

• Offering the most positive value with the new release of the software, such as providing additional features

• Eliminating all the negative points from software, such as bugs and downtime

Let’s see how companies perform release management with the following practices. 

The best practice you can follow for software release management

Check out the best practices for release management: 

1. Requesting to add new features

The stage consists of informing developers about adding new features by identifying the requirements that must be fulfilled in the software. 

2. Release planning and design

In the next stage, after making a request change, the team works on planning features that must be developed and deployed in the next release. 

Along with developers, contributions from the operations and management team are also required in this stage. 

3. Software build

Now, the team will work on the building process of features that are decided in the planning stage. 

The development team will pick up the list of development tools, such as an integrated development environment, libraries, compilers, etc., in case the following things are not present in a developer’s environment.

4. Review

The newly created or modified software that includes new features will go through various review stages, such as checking quality & security checks, integration, UI testing, and acceptance. 

The review helps companies ensure the software provides the same functionality and appearance as expected during the release planning.

5. Test

This phase includes either automated or manual testing to ensure all the new features are working correctly. 

If code failure arises, the testing team can remove that incorrect code from the test platforms and notify the developers by providing detailed information about the tests.

After passing all the tests, the testing team promotes the code to the deployment environment.

6. Deployment

Instead of making new software available for everyone, at the start, the development team only makes the newly released software available to their beta testing community.

In a community, the enrolled users catch bugs in the live released software, helping developers refine the software before its official release when it becomes available for everyone.    

7. Support

However, the cycle doesn’t end even after making new features ready to use. The marketing and customer relations will work on campaigns to create awareness about the new app features among the targeted audience.

8. Issue reporting and collections

User feedback is essential for IT companies to deliver the software by modifying or adding new features to provide the best user experience.

Collecting all the users’ feedback helps companies to plan new features and updates for the next release. 

Also, companies take care of every issue reporting to improve the software performance by eliminating all the existing crashes and bugs from their software. However, following proper coding standard is essential for businesses to deliver the best product to their customers.

Best coding standard for software release management 

Focusing on improving the code standard helps businesses to fulfill the following purposes:

• Allowing developers to focus on the quality and functionality of the software, not on the coding layout

• It helps other developers to understand code sources faster and more clearly, which allows the overall team to improve its productivity and efficiency

• Promotes code reusability as the developer can find the specific code structure easily due to its organized structure and efficient standards

• Improves debugging efficiency of developers since proper code structure helps developers to quickly and easily visit the code structure where the error occurs. While the same will not be possible for an unorganized code structure

Now, check the best coding standards businesses you can follow for fruitful results.

1. Code layout

Make sure the code structure is easy to read and understand.

You can follow the given ways to ensure your code is organized correctly in terms of both look and feel:

• Always use the default code editor setting
• Use only one statement and declaration for line
• Put at least one blank line between methods and definitions in the code source
• Use parenthesis for making suggestions, for example:

If ((myVal > input 2) && (myVal > input 3) {

// do something

}

2. Commenting

Adding comments between methods, variables and other elements is a good practice to provide an overview of the code structure for new developers.

Here are the following things to be noted:

• Place comments on a separate line, not after the end of the line of the code
• Avoid writing too many comments (or simplify your code if it is too complex)

3. Properties

These are some good practices you can follow for properties:

• Don’t throw exceptions from property getters
• Always provide default values for properties
• Assign reasonable names for all properties
• Always create get-only properties in case the properties have not to be changed by the caller

4. Class names

Equal priority for introducing organized classes is also necessary. Follow the best practices:

• Use noun phrases for naming classes
• Use Pascal case
• Avoid type prefixes, such as C, H…, for class. (For ex: Write RestAPI instead on CRestAPI
• Don’t use the underscore character(_) while naming classes

5. Method name

These are some best practices for declaring methods:

• Use verbs or verb phrases
• Use Pascal code
• Provide descriptive, relevant names 
• Reveal the intent of implementation (ex: rename SendJSONData with PostTweet)

However, source control is also essential when it comes to effectively creating a strategy for software creation and modification.

Source control and its role in software release management 

First, let us understand the source control. It is a practice that we follow to track and manage the changes in the code, which helps us to resolve conflicts from multiple sources. 

Now let’s check the role of source code in detail:

• Creating an effective release management strategy is difficult without implementing a source control product.

• The source control helps developers to maintain their product by implementing new features and merging quotes between concurrent development streams.

• There are many best options for source control products, such as Visual Studio Team Services and Git.

Moreover, source control offers the following benefits to the development team:

File Management	The workflow of code files becomes efficient as developers can easily pass their files to other developers. The source control allows developers to define access to shared and exclusive files.
Historical Archive	Developers find it easier to restore any code source from the archive without breaking the current changes to the code. It becomes possible as data stores build an archive and snapshot of each file to make it available to access and use in the future.
Automation	Some code sources allow developers to automate repetitive tasks by offering them an additional option to execute a command from a batch file (for example, a database script).
Branches	The code source allows developers to build and execute a branching strategy through which developers or teams can work in isolation from the “main source code branch” to maintain stability while working on live projects.

How do you measure release success?

You can determine the success of implementing release management by completing the given objectives:

• Deploying your software on time
• The software has been deployed within budget
• Your software has not impacted current users
• The software has satisfied the demands of both new and existing users and has competitive and technological advantages

Need assistance on your software project?

Every software can be made better by taking guidance from IT experts. Facing challenges with the current software product is not new for many software-making companies. 

However, any organization’s best decision is to partner with other IT companies specializing in software release management. 

You can partner with the best IT companies, such as Idea Usher, that already provide their clients with the best consulting on release management. 

Contact Idea Usher:

Email:

[email protected]

Phone:

(+1)732 962 4560

(+91)859 140 7140

FAQ

1. How do you manage software releases?

Software release can be managed in the following steps:

• Requesting to add a new feature 
• Release planning and designing
• Software building 
• Review release
• Test release
• Release deployment 
• Release support 
• Reporting issue in release management

2. What is a software release strategy?

The software release strategy is when the company wants to create new or modify existing software. The process includes planning, scheduling, and managing software releases at different stages, such as planning, building, testing, etc. 

3. Why is software release management important?

Implementation of the release management process is essential as it helps in making efficient software building and modification strategies such as 

• Assisting companies in building predictable software in terms of features and functionality
• Offering better configuration for adding libraries and code sources
• Improving software quality
• It helps businesses to deliver a better customer experience
• The release offers scalable risk management
• Improves the efficiency of software development