Comments on Better Projects: Project Management and ITIL Release Management

Thanks for sharing that Dave.

2011-12-15T06:28:38.609+11:00

Thanks for sharing that Dave.

Project Management is about Build, Release Managem...

2011-12-15T06:13:43.468+11:00

Project Management is about Build, Release Management is about Delivery. PMs should be in control of resources required to build a solution, but Release Management manages the infrastructure (environments) and deployment processes that guarantee repeatable, no-risk delivery of the solution's artefacts into a run-time environment (QA, UAT, LIVE etc...). Release Management audits the change history of Release-Unit Builds (Packages of functionally related components) just as Software Config. Mgt. manages the version history of source-files. It then audits the environment content in terms of Release-Units deployed, and declares the overall Build for the Release under development (Eg. M3.5.1_build#11 - which is a consolidation of the various Release-Unit builds comprising the delivery).

Further to this, Release Management is integrated into Service Management, and issues a Forward Schedule of Releases (showing which Service-Applications are changing and when), and Release Notices for individual Releases that manifest the Business Content (RFCs, Incidents, Back-log defects and Project Outputs), and the Technical Content (Release Units), as well as knowledge transfer (updates for Known Problems and Workarounds), Release highlights, Delivery Timelines, outages, service-degradation etc...

Projects are only one way a service can change, BAU fixes (incidents), Emergency Incidents, Back-log defects can all be delivered effectively via Release Management and its supporting infrastructure of code-streams, environments and deployment resources.

That's kind of like analyzing the difference betwe...

2008-02-08T08:35:00.000+11:00

That's kind of like analyzing the difference between PM and QA - you can't - they're apples to oranges.

Well, ITIL and PM are the two favorite subjects ov...

2008-02-07T03:14:00.000+11:00

Well, ITIL and PM are the two favorite subjects over here, and the concepts are starting to become more and more compatible.

What prevented us from getting to this conclusion was the fact that in Brazil we are facing ITIL as a way out from the support crises we face.

If we think in terms of service support and service delivery, we are using service support as a contour solution and will really treat the problem (service delivery) later.

This way of thinking makes us tend to think about release management only when it involves a change to correct an error, and the systems improvements are being treated separated using whatever method we prefer.

According to ITIL, a change is a change and only one can have access to the CMDB, but it will take some time to make everybody agree.