configuration management

“We don’t release software. It escapes!” (Carl, my former boss and a VP of Development) 

My former boss, Carl, once tried enticing me to join his management team by emphasizing how badly the company could use my process discipline skills; it worked.  I felt bad for them, and I was intrigued by the challenge. But, I learned at least as much as they did during my tenure there.

Over the course of my career, I have seen many instances of people failing at release management. In this article, I highlight eight statements that I have heard over the years from people in our line of work. Even though these people abide by these statements, they would never dare to repeat them out loud. I hope you will find inspiration not to follow these sayings!

The lack of proper planning can doom any project, or team. By involving every stakeholder, release management is made easier by helping to ensure customer satisfaction. Deadlines are able to be met, and with the exact product your customer had in mind.

Developers must have good feedback to ensure productivity. Most shops have a continuous integration (CI) build process that allows the developer to quickly know if a build failed, and some shops have an automatic deploy of the CI build to provide website feedback. Lance Lyons writes about an approach to automating the update of databases in a CI environment.

One of the hardest daily tasks developers, QA, ScrumMasters, and product owners encounter is effective communication with others. Sound implausible? According to many articles, research, and personal observations, the main cause of project failure is not technology or hardware, but inefficient communication stemming from lack of effective communication between team members, incomplete business analysis, imprecise requirements, and vaguely formulated business objectives.