Design release process from very beginning

Creating good software that meets customer expectations is 50% of success. The other 50% is getting it to the customer in a most quick, easy and smooth matter as possible. This process is called releasing software.

Release flavours

Releasing software comes in two flavors, one is a clean slate installation, second is version/maintenance upgrade. Where first one is rather simple the latter could be quite problematic. The more complex the application and environment it runs in, the more problematic it’ll be.  Releasing software to running cluster of application servers with data migration and without downtime could prove challenging for the toughest release gurus.

I always thought of release in a same way I receive or send parcel. When I have something to sell I organize it online, Delivery Company comes to pick it up and it’s on its way. I can then track it online to see the progress my parcel is making.

It is exactly how I would like any release process to be. When my package (new version of software) is ready I would like to press the button and have it on its way. All I should do is monitor if something went wrong and what if it did.

Automation

Automation of the process is a must if one wants to remove wasted time on same repeatable steps. It is quite often automation that gets neglected from the beginning of software life, until the point when release becomes unmanageable manual monster.

Automation should actually be planned from the very beginning. Whenever I start to work on a project I ask myself what do I need to do to get the software to end user as quick as it’s ready with as less possible effort. This is the beginning of the release automation adventure.

Releasing often and quickly adds into the whole iterative development process, combining the whole as one iterative delivery. Process reduces time that takes for the requirement to reach end user as a piece of functionality. That makes end user happy and gives way to feedback. Software development team can use feedback to adapt and evolve the software.

So, what now?

It is important to design and implement release process from the beginning. It is also important to automate it. It will make it possible to ship as soon as piece of work is done. I know of teams where releasing is happening on a daily basis.

Automate every step that requires human interaction. Look for candidates in places where the only manual thing is pressing a button or running a script.

If release process requires monitoring (e.g. waiting for application to stop before continuing release process), try to automate that as well.

I also found that usage of tools that support coding the process, not configuring it via XML, works much better and are more flexible and easy to use.