Hello!
One must note that under Salesforce, the process for release management is not an isolated one.
It is linked with the business’s other processes, like change management, the objective of the business, governance, and additional aspects of the company associated with the business.
The release management process can be managed jointly by the steering committee of the company or the Center of Excellence, often referred to as COE, to ensure direction and success.
The objective of every business for the release management process
Through an organized process for release management, companies attempt to get a reputable, reliable and process that is independent of resources for boosting business value.
Every business must have an application and delivery value chain that is optimized so that business values can be delivered in a hassle-free manner without any bottlenecks. Many companies have successfully implemented it to get effective results in business of all sizes.
Components of release management
Given below are the components of release management:
- Release cycles
- The change management process
- Alignment with the release on Salesforce
- Team structures that are planned and managed
- Technological control
Businesses should note that change or release management does not comprise one process. There are several departments involved in this process. There have been several instances where it has been seen that every department of the organization has a unique process for release management that is different from the others.
Consistency and visibility
Experts recommend all the processes linked to release management in an organization should be standardized and streamlined for every user. This is because they are deploying the same resource, foundation, and platform for incorporating their business processes. If they are not streamlined, it is difficult for the company to maintain governance.
For boosting good governance, the processes about release management for every department in the company should be consistent and visible. This means every action of the whole team should be streamlined and supportive in the above endeavor.
The cycles for release management
The varied sets of customer needs are looked after by several systems. There should be one centralized system for managing them. If they are managed in one place, then the other team members will have access to improved visibility and can track changes easily.
All of the requests for these changes should be prioritized. Moreover, the need of a steering committee is needed to assess the requirements frequently, with which changes in the above system can be prioritized.
Experts from the esteemed name in SalesforceDevOps, suggest that if you talk about the implementation phase, then the whole IT and business teams should remain in touch with one another and have proper communication.
The business, QA, IT, and Release Management teams should be in touch with one another at the same of complete cycle releases. There should be a proper calendar where the IT team’s publishing activity of these sprint cycles should be maintained. It should have the dates for the QA round, final deployment, testing of the units, and the production org cycles.
Understanding the process of change management
Developers can change the sandbox, and they can show any other changes in it too. When the features are completed, they can later be shifted to the QA environment too.
The QA tests the features as per the necessary documentation, after which it can be shifted to the department for unit testing. In this manner, the process for change management commences. On top of this, the components for change management are reviewed.
They include the test cases, the documents for requirements, the production code, and others for the process to be completed successfully.
Alignment with Salesforce Release
Salesforce regularly upgrades its code, and so at the time, it can be challenging for businesses to release their code aligned with Salesforce.
This is why they need to answer the following questions:
- How should these changes be tested?
- The release of these changes before and after the release
- Business values of these changes when compared to Salesforce’s new features
- What features should be planned for taking up?
- The number of users that have been affected by the internal release
- The number of sandboxes that are available for testing internal changes
In the above case, several releases are tested by changes in the sandbox.
Here, the prime factor is the gap between your software and the salesforce release date should not be big.
Companies should both test and track their changes beforehand.
The structures of the teams should be planned and managed well
The release should be divided into many categories during planning like enhancements, fixes, trust, projects, and more. Separate teams should be formed for these categories.
The production team will control the fixes while the enhancements are looked after by the team for production support or project teams. The above also depends on the changes that are needed for the code lines.
If you examine a project team, it is generally broken down into the following:
- Business team- This team is primarily responsible for making changes in light configurations that include ways to create and manage users, the territories, the data, and the page layouts by assigning layouts to different users. Moreover, the management of the above relies on the permission handed out to every member of the team and business customers.
- Team for sales and service- This team has users accountable for managing the early cycle, quality of the software team, change management process, and more.
- Teams for project enhancement – These teams are responsible for managing changes in small projects. For example, they make changes to visual pages, triggers, or small changes to the present integration.
In conclusion, it can be said that project teams are generally responsible for big and complex changes. They have multiple independencies across the other eco-systems of the business, like the ERP systems or any system that depends on it managed by the above teams.
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