Insights

View full profileLuke Griffiths

Delivery Director
Bluefin Solutions

The lowdown on a business release strategy

What is it?

In IT delivery terms a business release is a package of functional and technical content deployed to users at a predetermined time. This could be a monthly release of new reports from the business information team, or a 6-monthly go-live of large solutions or enhancements in the ERP or CRM space.

Why do I need one?

The important term here is 'business' - the release mechanism is designed to help IT regularly and consistently deliver value-add tools to users to support them in their work. IT benefits because it gets a structured process and timeline with which to prioritise and filter requests for new functionality, plus the breathing room to design, build, test and deploy a great solution every time.

Business users are happy because they know when they will get their new features and what is expected from them to get a quality result.

So, it solves all my delivery problems then?

Not on its own. An effective release process needs the following things in place to run:

• Skilled technical analysts supported by strong change and delivery managers.
• Agile, knowledgeable teams who know the solutions in depth to be able to assess the impact of change quickly and accurately.
• A functioning change control process
• Governance to filter requirements in a way to deliver what the business needs most
• Sponsorship from senior IT and business stakeholders
• Effective support transition so that the release can focus on delivery of new content
• Standards - for development and use of specific software tools.
• Well maintained infrastructure ready to reliably support the release phases
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities to ensure IT and business work together

One size fits all, right?

You many need a couple of approaches to business releases in your organisation. Different applications often require different approaches to delivery. The optimum balance between agile delivery of new content and highly governed protection of the live environment will vary between BI and ERP systems, for example.

What will it give me?

When running properly it can be expected to improve the reputation of IT with the business, leading to greater usage of expensive business systems and improved release of funds necessary to move along the technology roadmap.

The release process helps to protect the good stuff already put live but allows it to be enhanced in a controlled way, enabling IT to keep pace with business change.

The bottom line is that a business getting the tools to operate effectively , when it needs them, will perform better and the whole company benefits.

What do other organisations have in place?

A release process should be tailored to the size and complexity of the job at hand. A multinational integrating solutions from 4 regions may operate a 6-monthly cycle for large new content but require a more agile channel to deliver changes every few weeks. Smaller organisations, or those with greater central authority over systems may be able to have a quarterly or even monthly cycle.

Common to all is having the roles, people and process definitions in place to start running in a release oriented manner. The process will, and must, always evolve to meet the changing demands on the IT function and its own capabilities.

Where do I start?

• Initially, getting a handle on what and when your department feels it can realistically deliver is a good place to start. Attempting monthly releases straight off is likely to be too aggressive.
• Put a provisional calendar in place and define some high-level rules around scope - does the release process cover all business systems, for example, or is it focused on business information delivery.
• Consider moving a couple of signed-off projects into the first release, keeping the scope manageable.
• Introduce the idea of regular drop points to the business community and explain their ongoing role in providing clear requirements for specific deadlines and participating in acceptance and regression testing at predefined points. 
• Start holding a regular change assessment meeting to understand and prioritise requirements proactively. It is this that will provide you with the funnel needed to control the content of a release and keep it to a level that fits with the team's capacity.
• Form a competency centre to give you the centralised resources to handle releases-actually maybe that's one for another blog.