With the cloud reigning supreme in the technology space, Release management is the backbone of software development processes for many teams. Interestingly though, it is difficult to point to one single thing & call it ‘release management’. In reality, the release management process consists of planning, scheduling, executing & refining steps across the entire software development lifecycle. A foolproof release management strategy is key to rolling out successful builds consistently and efficiently.
As software development teams continue to adopt agile development processes, release frequency keeps going up. Deploying releases requires teams to be fast without compromising on reliability & stability of their products or services. Release management tools can help teams efficiently manage and automate the processes so that you can focus on delivering value for your stakeholders.
Key Features Of Release Management Tools
The right release management tool can go a long way in helping you ship out builds faster while minimizing downtime & maximizing the value for customers. Given that the release management itself consists of so many facets, many different release management tools exist addressing different parts of the process, each with unique features and capabilities. However, it would be best to choose the release management tools that are right for your team.
Some of the features you should look for in the tool you are considering:
1. Automation:
Release management tools often include automation capabilities that allow teams to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as building, unit or performance testing, and deploying code.
2. Collaboration:
Allowing teams to collaborate and share information, updates is a key aspect of any tool that would potentially assist you in your release management process.
3. Release planning:
Features for planning and scheduling releases, such as calendars, timelines, and roadmaps are a must if your releases span across multiple teams & departments.
4. Deployment:
Tools that will help manage deployment across multiple environments will be a necessity as your process matures. Such tools will become indispensable with time.
5. Rollout Management:
Feature flag tools are in vogue these days. Their ability to target specific groups/users along with the support for A/B testing just takes the release management sophistication at a whole new level.
6. Metrics and analytics:
Finally, to gather objective feedback & improve your processes further – your Release management stack would often include tools to measure & keep track of metrics/analytics.
How to Choose a Release Management Tool?
Factors to consider when choosing a release management tool are almost the same that you’d consider while finalizing any piece of software for your team. To brush things up, we are pointing out those factors below:
1. Ease of use:
One or more tools that you decide to use across different parts of the release management process should be easy to use and intuitive for team members of all skill levels.
2. Flexibility:
Such tool/s should be flexible and adaptable to your team and organization’s specific needs and requirements.
3. Integration:
This is by far the most important one. Given the myriad number of software used across the entire software development lifecycle, it is imperative that the release management tool/s offer out of the box powerful integrations.
4. Scalability:
Depending on the size of your organization & complexity of your release management processes, the tool/s you choose must stand ground for the long term.
5. Support:
Of course, if you intend to pay for the tool/s you would expect top notch & strong customer support from the provider.
6. Cost:
And finally, looking at the RoI the release management tool should be cost-effective and offer good value for money.
It can be helpful to research and compare different tools in the release management space to see which ones meet your team’s specific needs and requirements. You can also check for recommendations within your professional network & learn from their experience.
13 Release Management Tools for Release Management:
Like we said earlier, the release management process consists of various aspects & you’d rarely find one tool covering all the bases. Thus, the tools that we talk about below cover one or more aspects with great results & also offer integrations for implementing the whole flow together. Eventually, you may end up stitching a release management process that goes through multiple of such tools.
1. Jira
Jira is one of the most popular release and project management software used by agile teams. It has built-in templates for Scrum and Kanban and integrates with popular tools such as Slack, Figma etc. And then there are plethora of apps available in the Atlassian marketplace to solve different use cases.
2. Plutora
Plutora has fast become a favorite among release management tools. It can integrate existing tools and data into a single platform so that teams have complete visibility into their release process. In addition, it has built-in dashboards and customization engines for visibility into the entire release process.
3. Ansible
Acquired by Red Hat, Ansible has powerful automation capabilities to simplify complex processes. The enterprise-level release management tool has features to scale automation and empower teams with collaboration. Some of the features included in the platform are automation execution environments, automation controllers, automation mesh, and Red Hat insights.
4. QA Wolf
QA Wolf is designed primarily to help catch bugs early so that clean builds can be shipped out faster. This test automation tool will be one cog in the wheel of release management tools to guarantee the quality of delivery.
5. Clarive
Another popular tool, Clarive, claims to be the first to deliver an integrated experience to Dev and Ops. From a fast Git server to continuous integration and Kanban Boards to custom dashboards, Clarive is a feature-rich platform that can support release management effectively.
6. Chef
Chef is a feature-rich tool that enables teams to scale continuous delivery across multiple applications and environments. Its compliance module provides DevSecOps automation so that organizations remain agile while reducing risk.
7. LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarkly is a feature flag management platform that enables teams to quickly and easily manage, roll out, and test new features in their codebase. The platform provides teams with a centralized hub for managing their feature flags and tools for tracking and analyzing the performance of their code.
8. Cloudbees
Cloudbees is a self-service, scalable platform that can help manage and release features at an enterprise scale. It provides visibility across pipeline tools, releases, and teams. Its compliance module can ensure that assets are always compliant and detail the risk that needs to be mitigated.
9. Octopus Deploy
Octopus Deploy is a release management tool that provides teams with a simple and intuitive interface for managing their deployments and tools for configuring and customizing their release process.
10. AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodePipeline is a release management tool that enables teams to automate their build, test, and deployment processes on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform.
11. Puppet
Puppet is a release management tool that provides teams with a platform for managing and automating their infrastructure and tools for deploying and configuring code.
12. Google Cloud Build
Google Cloud Build is a release management tool that enables teams to automate their build, test, and deployment processes on the Google Cloud Platform.
13. Terraform
Terraform is a release management tool that provides teams with a platform for managing and automating their infrastructure and tools for deploying and configuring code.
Conclusion
The right release management tool can give your team the edge in the next rollout as they come with powerful features.
If your software development team is already using Jira for their day to day activities, our Release planning & reports app for Jira will take the Release management experience to a whole new level.
