release management: managing your internal releases
TRANSCRIPT
Managing Your Internal ReleasesRelease Management Breakout Session – Dreamforce 2015
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Joshua HoskinsSolution Architect – Appirio (soon to be Alumni) Director, Product Development – Talent Rover
@jhoskins – http://crmified.com
My Promise To YouEnable organizations to continuously release valuable features with little to no disruption to your business by sharing my experience, best practice and recommended toolset
#ItShouldJustWork #LetsMakeItHappen
“Release Management” Defined
The process intended to oversee the development, testing, deployment and support of feature releases.
Finding it hard prioritize the small stuff?
Are there competing prioritizes for the big stuff?
Does existing functionality breaks regularly?
Hard to tell what’s in the pipe and potential impact?
Implement Salesforce Ideas OR Estimate ROI
Increase Testing Efforts
Implement Regression Testing
Implement Change Advisory Board for Transparency
Understanding Your Release Management Process What’s working well? ..... What’s not working so well?
Quarterly
Monthly
Weekly
Daily
Don’t forget about the occasional “Fire Drill”
#TheyWillHappen
Communication Plan
User Training
What is your the Hot Fix process?
Who needs to be involved?
How long does a release cycle take?
Establish Regular Release Cycles Based on your organizational readiness and processes
Use Salesforce Schedule Weekly Meetings Plan & Size Regularly
Implement Lightweight Processes Implementing features shouldn't be difficult
Define
Technical Solutionaka “The How”
How do you measure success?
Dependencies
Impact Assessment
Execution Plan
Task Assignment
Task Execution
Test Case Creation
Design Plan Develop
Who? What? When? Why? How?
Establish a release infrastructure early, review it oftenWhere do we start? Who needs to do what? When to they need to do it?
Test
Deploy
Smoke Test
End User Communication
Plan for Worst Case
Run Reports
Walk the Halls
Speak to End Users
Host Retrospectives
Hyper Support
Deploy Measure Support
Unit Testing
Testing Kickoff
System Acceptance (SAT)
User Acceptance (UAT)
Clear Issue Logging
Establish a release infrastructure early, review it oftenWhere do we start? Who needs to do what? When to they need to do it?
Invest in Roles Who talks to who?
Invest in Roles What’s Ideal and What’s Not?
1) Separate Development Activity
2) Review Audit Logs
3) Compare & Merge Changes
4) Deploy to another Sandbox
5) Smoke Testing
6) User Acceptance Testing
7) Deploy again, again and again
8) Deploy to Production
9) Smoke Test
Based on Personal ExperienceDeployment Steps
Automate and Standardize as much as you can (Rinse & Repeat)
Conduct Release Retrospectives (Stop, Start, Continue)
Track Duration for Activities – Are there ways to reduce the time an activity takes?
Track duration of activities, research ways to improve
Write Test Coverage for the User’s Interaction Flow - Developers: Don’t just test the method!
Establish Clear and Positive Expectations - “This is what we need and this is how it benefits you”
Clear User Stories, Assumptions & Acceptance Criteria
Publish Executable Test Cases as Early as Possible
Compile Pre & Post Deployment Instructions (Refine after each release)
Tips & Tricks
Keep the learning going in the Admin Lodge
Admin Theater
55+ Sessions by Admins for Admins!
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Thank YouHave an #amazing Dreamforce! #DF15
@jhoskins – CRMified.com