Digital transformation and improved customer experience are key to survival in our new economy. And DevOps is a proven way to increase value delivery and stay competitive. It enables faster, better, and less risky projects.
Because of these benefits, IT teams in organizations worldwide have invested significant time, resources, and funding in the DevOps toolchain, but has it been effective?
The Problems with Silos
The Standish Chaos Report found that only 29% of IT projects are successful, while 19% fail, and the remaining 52% are challenged, meaning they are either late, over budget, or missing scope.
Each IT team in the value chain typically has their own tools, including:
- Projects in a project portfolio management (PPM) tool
- Requirements in an ALM tool
- Code in a repository tool
- Test cases and progress in a test tool
- Defects in a test tool
- Automated tests in another tool
- Environment changes in an ITSM tool
- Configuration in a CMDB tool
- Deployment steps in an ARA tool
But these tools operate in silos and do not provide the visibility needed by release managers and executives. To add to that, we see:
- Geographically dispersed teams
- Engagement with third-party vendors
- Hundreds or thousands of applications with complex interdependencies
- Mission critical applications with significant business risk in the event of failure
- A need for regulatory compliance
- Competitive pressure to do more and faster, often with converging delivery pipelines
To do their jobs, release managers are forced to use manual tools and processes that can’t scale, such as spreadsheets, email, Slack, PowerPoint, Wiki pages, and frequent meetings with numerous stakeholders. All of this results in project information that is incomplete, inaccurate, and dated.
Consequently, management is operating with a blindfold on. There are three variables that can change to optimize project throughput: the scope, the schedule, or the resource allocation. But without real-time project visibility across the entire portfolio, team members, managers, and executives cannot make optimal decisions.
To be effective in this environment, all of these tools need to be brought together.
The Importance of Effective Enterprise Release Management
Managing the releases and the teams involved effectively can deliver better quality software more quickly. Using release management tools enables integration with the DevOps tool chain, delivers the appropriate process and governance, and provides management and executives with end-to-end insights and analytics in real time. And you should be tracking a number of metrics including:
- Value delivered per month
- Release velocity per month
- User stories delivered per month
- Defect escapes to production per month
- Cycle time of code to production per month
- Efficiency of staff (wait time vs. value add time)
At Plutora, we’ve found that customers who have adopted enterprise release management have been able to achieve meaningful results. For example, a leading wireless provider achieved:
- 2.5x increase in releases per year
- 2.3x increase in changes per year
- 40% reduction in meeting time coordinating releases
While a leading health care provider achieved:
- 85% reduction in meeting time coordinating releases
- Improved release management processes
- Reduced risk of release failure
To achieve the maximum value, release management tools can effectively manage the DevOps process from ideation all the way to delivery. To see Plutora Release Management in action, take fifteen minutes and watch this brief demonstration by Plutora co-founder Dalibor Siroky.
