503-cathy kirch releasing release management-final

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503: Releasing Release Management

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503: Releasing Release Management

Cathy A. KirchAllstate Insurance

ITSM Process Consultant,priSM America’s Chair

itSMF Chicago Land LIG President

Working with: Service Transitions Lifecycle

Change, Configuration and Release Management

Delivery Lead for the Enterprise Education & Training for ITSM

Consulting Service Level Agreements with our Agent Network

• ITIL Expert, Service Manager, all V2 Practitioner, Service Catalog,Service Transitions and V3 CSI designations

• Practicing Service Management implementation and Operations since 2000

• Past positions of System Engineer, Application designer and developer, DB network specialist, Program/Project manager

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Allstate at a Glance• The Allstate Corporation is the nation’s largest publicly held personal lines insurer.

• A fortune 100 company with $133 billion in assets.

• Allstate sells 13 major lines of insurance, including auto, property, life and commercial. Allstate also offers retirement and investment products and banking services.

• Allstate is widely known through the “You’re In Good Hands With Allstate®” slogan.

• The Allstate Corporation encompasses more than 70,000 professionals with technology operations located around the globe.

• Allstate is reinventing protection and retirement to help individuals in approximately 17 million households protect what they have today and better prepare for tomorrow.

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Allstate Insurance at a GlanceAllstate’s Technology Environment

• High-Speed Networking• Integration Architecture• J2EE and .Net• Large Scale Networks• Message Brokering• Performance Management• Rich Media Management• Service Oriented Architecture• Unix, Windows and Mainframe platforms• Web Content Management• Web Services

• Advanced Analytics• Business Process Management• Capacity Planning• Data Warehousing• Document Imaging• Enterprise Content Management• Enterprise Databases• Enterprise Information Integration• ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) Tools• Financial Applications• High-Availability and Disaster Recovery

• Multiple operating systems • Multiple technology platforms • Multiple database systems

• 3,500+ IT professionals• 5,000+ software applications• 100,000+ desktop computers supported

Applications and Services

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Agenda

• ITSM Program• What is Release Management (RM)?• Triumphs of pursing Release Management • Integration• Maturing Release Management• The future of Release Management• Lessons Learned

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• Release definition: A collection of hardware, software, documentation, processes or other components required to implement one or more approved Changes to IT services. The contents of each Release are managed, Tested, and Deployed as a single entity. **

• Release Management takes a holistic view of changes to an IT service and ensures that all aspects of a release, both technical and non-technical, are considered together. **

• Release Management works closely with the Change Management and Configuration Management processes to ensure that the shared Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is kept up to date following changes implemented by new releases.

** Per ITIL Glossary & Terms

What is Release Management-definition?

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

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• Deployment Management– (Service Transition) The Activity responsible for movement of new or

changed hardware, software, documentation, process, etc. to the Live Environment.**

• Change Management– (Service Transition) The Process responsible for controlling the

Lifecycle of all Changes. The primary objective of Change Management is to enable beneficial Changes to be made, with minimum disruption to IT Services.**

** Per ITIL Glossary & Terms


ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

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Deployment Change ReleaseNew Infrastructure

Approval for dates, scheduling

CalendarPlanning, assess

The Cloud Validation of process

Packaging, testing, training

Sun Fire 4800 in System Cabinet with 2 Media Tray at top

Hitachi Data Systems with 524 GB

Deploy a new server & storage

Change the location of application execution

Release a new set of capabilities

Claims runs on Windows moved from Mainframe

Enhancing first notice of loss for Claims processing

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What is Release Management-outputs

• Assess– Planned Start/End– Risk– Description– Impact/Urgency– Scope– Release Type– Name/Phone/Group

• Plan– Location of:

• Business Requirements• Release Requirements• Design Document • Back out Method

• Build– Deployment method– Application– Delivery tool

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• Test– Test Environment– Acceptance Test Plan– Release Checklist– Test Results– Testing Signoff– Testing date

What is Release Management-outputs• Training

– Environment/Venue– Training Plan– Training Results– Reason if no training– Communication Plan– Type of Training– Approval

• Distribute/Verify– Actual Start/End Dates– Closure Code– Location of PIR

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Agenda

• ITSM Program• What is Release Management (RM)?• Triumphs of pursuing Release Management• Integration• Maturing Release Management• Early wins• The future of Release Management• Lessons Learned

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Triumphs of pursuing Release Management

• Successful releases• Stable test and production environments• Reduced likelihood of illegal software/viruses• Error reduction

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• Value: Improved consistency in implementation approach across the business change, service teams, suppliers and customers.

• Benefits: Improved implementation approach; consistent, traceable requirements; greater efficiencies with consistent approach to release management; less frequent change resulting in decreased risk to application availability; improved communication focused on consistent messaging.

Triumphs of pursuing Release Management

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Agenda

• What is Release Management (RM)?• Triumphs of pursuing Release Management• Integration• Maturing Release Management• The future of Release Management• Lessons Learned

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Integration

• Other Processes– Change

• Provides control of the production environment• Receives release notifications

– Configuration • Provides CI information• Receives release notification

– Incident• Provides report of incidents introduced by release• Receives release notification

– Problem• Provides report of problems introduced by release• Receives release notification

Service Transition

Service Operation

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Integration

• Other Processes– Service Desk

• Provides feedback of performance on minor changes• Receives release notifications & training on new releases

– Service Level Management• Provides SLAs, OLAs, UCs• Receives release notification

– Capacity Management• Recommends distribution strategy• Receives release notification

– IT Service Continuity Management • Provides confirmation continuity measure in place• Receives release notification

Service Strategy

Service Design

Continual Service

Improvement

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Lifecycles - Mapped Together

Create & Record Review & assess Approve Coordinate & Implement

Verify & Close

Change Management

Project

Release

SDLC

DeployBuildDesignPlanningInitiationDemand Test

Build Training Distribution VerificationAssess Plan Test

Feasibility Study

Design ImplementationAnalysis Testing Evaluation

Integration

Close Operate

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Initiator

*Coordinator*Implementer

Change Management

Create & record Review & Assess Approve Coordinate &

Implement

Verify &

Close

*Change Manager*Change Coordinator

*Implementer

Build Training Distribution VerificationAssess Plan Test

Integration

Roles

Initiator Release Manager/ CoordinatorProject Manager

ReleaseManagement

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Agenda


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• Compliance – is there a Release strategy, calendar, records, process flow, policy?

• Performance – are we delivering releases/change faster and at optimum cost and minimized risk?

• Quality – can we assure customer satisfaction when using the release?

• Value ($) – are we increasing availability & are you enabling business processes?

• The IT Scorecard will change with release process maturity

Value

Quality

Performance

Effe

ctiv

enes

sTime

Are we on or off course?

Compliance

Impro

vemen

ts (C

SI)Can we predict our value?

Maturing Release Management?

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Maturing Release Management The Release and Deployment Management (RDM) Process is applied in various

manners among groups

Much of RDM is incorporated into the Software Development lifecycle

There is no central repository for process documentation, repositories are owned locally

RDM is not integrated with the change process

Many tools are used based on technology supported

Early life support or training of support staff is not a concept that is generally used

Release schedules are published

Back out, test, and release plans are not normally provided

Business sign off, as a rule not required

Roles are documented but not applied the same way across the enterprise

There are no process metrics

Conclusions

Moving the needle – Develop enterprise polices, process and standards

0 1 2 3 4 5

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Maturing Release Management

Develop a flexible process that can be utilized equally across the enterprise with a central repository

Use early life support and train support staff before a release is tested and installed into production

Develop and implement templates for back out, test and release plans

Identify key process roles including process owner and process lead

Create functional requirements and standards for toolset selection to support process polices

Define the necessary polices to govern the process

Monitor and report key process metrics

Recommendations

Moving the needle – Develop enterprise polices, process and standards

0 1 2 3 4 5

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Agenda


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IT Process Evolution

– Are you ready for the next change?

IT Infrastructure and Operations: The Next Five Years The Cloud on IT’s Horizon

By Jean-Pierre Garbani, Marc CecereForrester Research

The Future of Release Management

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• The Cloud….– Reduce diversity– Increase volume

• Automation technologies• Economy of scale

• Consider impact of technology changes on processes and people

• Application portability: applications must be easily movable

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Application Releases

Field Capabilities split across multiple release

calendars

Centralized Releases

Fewer, more consistent releases that are larger

and more complex

Too many releases can contribute to availability and stability issues.

Field capacity to accommodate and adopt change should be a factor in release planning, which avoids low user adoption of new capabilities.

A compelling opportunity exists to move to an enterprise release strategy with fewer, more

consistent releases for all Systems (people, process, information, technology).


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Lessons Learned and Questions

• The time is now for Release Management• Automation is key for the future• One calendar is essential for coordination• Human change navigation is critical• There will be concerns – budget; time to market;

support staff; complexity and risk of a release; metrics and measurements

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Lessons Learned

• Questions to ask yourself:– Do you have a change or a release calendar?– Is your CAB creating your release schedule?– Are your technology silos planning their calendars

individually?– Can you define the boundaries between Change and

Release?– Can you create an advanced Release Calendar during your

budget season?

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Thank you for attending this session! Please make sure to fill out an evaluation form.

Session: 503: Releasing Release ManagementCathy A. Kirch

[email protected]

priSM® CPDs can be earned by attendingthe FUSION 11 Conference & Expo. Please get scanned by your room monitor to get credit.

503-cathy kirch releasing release management-final

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