After 15 years in Release Management, having estimated more than 1200 releases, having worked with more than 60 developers, 50 testers, 30 product owners and several different support teams and project managers, I can say I’ve seen it all. What do I mean by all? It is not just about how frequently you release (and how frequently things fail, and you roll back or panic) but also the different approaches in place, also based on the cards on the table, the cultural differences, the characters involved, the starting and ending moods. Well, surprisingly, I’ve come to the conclusion that all companies, all teams are the same, really the same-same: they just operate under a different disguise every time. No matter if it’s finance, advertising, SaaS, SAP, IaaS, FIFA, FIFO, insurance, security, Disney World, … the struggle when the release day is approaching is the same, pretty similar all around the world, and I’ve noticed that based on the outcome which has been incidentally the reason I was hired every time: to solve the same old issues.
The first issue, very often, is the belief that your company is different. Definitely, there are plenty of ways to fail the same way, if you are really that sure about it. Sounds weird, right? It is.
So why me now? Why a different way, so task and time-based oriented? Because of no politics involved. Exciting, right? You may have your DevOps pipeline broken… when you call the plumber to fix a pipe at home, do you have wife vs. husband vs. landlord vs. neighbour debating and arguing and holding the plumber with his tools in his hands, while you have further and further meetings and considering you want to have a different pipe instead? No, the plumber comes, he does the job, he gets paid for the job done and he happily leaves. The pipe is fine now, you didn’t need to know or say a word! Plus — and this is good — he doesn’t need to stay around every time you wash your hands or turn the washing machine on.
You don’t need a Release Manager around if the process has been correctly designed by an experienced Release Manager. You follow the process… but you just said people tend to break the process? Then the process isn’t good, in the first place. Unless people deliberately break it, because something does not make them happy. Well, we can talk about that too. An impartial opinion (I don’t know anyone! My only goal is to make the release process flow smoothly), very honest and with no filters, can really help. It may hurt, but it will help a lot.
it’s convenient for you — and good for me. It’s called win-win.