Release Management

This is a short article that needs to be read: http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/answer/What-tools-are-required-for-effective-release-management

What, then, are the must-haves in a technology-based, modern release management system?

• Visibility: We need to know real-time, what the status of the releases are. We need a release calendar that lets us see when things are happening so we can balance the release workload. 
• Control: Every stakeholder must be able to give their electronic signature to approve, and it needs to be reportable and auditable. 
• Reporting: We need to track our performance against our KPI’s and SLA’s, and we need early warning when we are out of range on these numbers. 
• Vault: This should contain the master code that is destined for production: no more developers each having their own path to production, no more developers with root access. 
• Deployment automation: We need a repeatable and predictable technology that consistently deploys our code and backs it out automatically if things go wrong.