Release Management

What Does Release Management Mean?

Release management is the part of the software management process dealing with development, testing, deployment and support of software releases to the end user. The team involved in this process is referred to as the release management team.

Techopedia Explains Release Management

When software is developed and tested, it will often go through a release management team (especially in larger development shops). The main activities involved in release management are:

1. Generating a planning policy for the implementation of new versions
2. Creating new versions or buying them from third parties
3. Testing new versions in an environment simulating the production environment
4. Implementing new versions in the production environment
5. Carrying out back-out plans to remove the new version if necessary
6. Keeping the configuration management database (CMDB) up to date
7. Informing and training customers and users about the functionality of the newly released version

Releases may be classified into major, minor and emergency releases. These may be denoted by a series of release numbers, the further away from the decimal point, the less significant the changes made in that release the eample below shos how they are commonly used:

• Major Releases (usually called "Versions") 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc..
• Minor Releases (usually called "Upgrades") 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc…
• Emergency Releases (called a variety of names including: bug fixes, updates, patches) 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, etc…