ITIL - Release & Deployment Management

Release and Deployment Management includes planning, designing, building, testing and deploying new software and hardware components in the live environment. It is important to maintain integrity of live environment by deploying correct releases.

Release Manager is the process owner of this process.

Key Points −

• Release Unit refers to portion of IT infrastructure that should be released together.
• In Release package each of the software in the package depends on other software in the group for its performance.

Objectives

Release and Deployment management ensures that −

• Delivering change faster and at optimum cost and minimized risk
• Successful and on schedule deployment of release package.
• New or changed services are capable of delivering the agreed service requirements.
• There is knowledge transfer to enable the customers and users to optimize their use of service to support their business activities.
• Minimal unpredicted impact on the production services, operation and support organization.
• Customers, users and service management staff are satisfied with service transition practices and outputs.

It is important to define appropriate release package type for a given type of release. The following diagram illustrates an example of a release package

Release and Deployment Management Process

Here the activities included in Release and Deployment Management process −

Release Management Support

It provides guidelines and support for the deployment of releases.

Release Planning

The objective of this process is to assign authorized changes to release packages. It also defines the scope of releases.

Release Build

This process deals with building releases and ensures all components are ready to enter the testing phase.

Release Deployment

The objective of this process is to deploy new release in the live environment and also arrange training for end users and operating staff.

Early Life Support

The purpose of this process is to resolve operational issues during initial period after release deployment.

Release Closure

This process deals with closing a release after verifying if activity logs and CMS contents are up to date.