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Gathering Insights - Release Management Best Practices

Hi, all!

I'm refining how we manage our release adoption for our community and plan to share lessons learned with the community. While documenting, I realized I'm missing out by not asking you in advance how you do this work and, in turn, compile into a tips & tricks. 

I've listed my work-in-progress process below. What are your thoughts? What should be added? Where am I adding layers that might slow me down? And, most important - how do you manage the frequent releases throughout the year?  

My Specifics: 

  • We get updates nearly every month -this cadence has been in place since the beginning of 2020 
  • Some releases have larger roll-out after early access (like private group hubs); other times it's a small tweak or update to the documentation
  • We see a roadmap webinar a little over once a year to give us the bigger picture context

My process thus far - 

1. Each half we set out a general set of goals for community programming and I make note of which internal stakeholders will need to be informed of progress or help shape the ideas

2. I run these past our vendor to ensure we aren't missing any new great ideas they have

3. I've subscribed to their release notes (pssttt - if you haven't done so for your Flexera products, be sure to add them.) It's a great way to get the push notifications and reduce the need to search.

4. I set time to quickly scan the release notes when I get notified. Here I triage based on how quickly I can implement and/or it relates to our half plans:

  • This may have potential - if something may help another team or program, I'll pass it along and ask if they'd want more info

  • This definitely has potential and would require some internal work to set-up processes/programs - I set up a meeting with those who would be involved. I'm finding these sometimes have to be a few weeks out due to other in-flight initiatives.  

  • This should be used asap - I play with the new functionality and then send out instructions to the larger audience. If it's a public feature for the community, I post in Community Hub.

Ponderings - Overall we've adjusted to the more frequent release cadence and I see we have two opportunities for particular improvement: 

1. How can I give more early access/advance notice?

2. Do the monthly communications to stakeholders encourage more adoption or do they decrease focus on the larger goals (e.g., are notices that we have a new report view that may be helpful distracting, etc?) 

What have you seen at your companies? I'm excited to hear from you - thank you in advance!

 

 

 

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(1) Reply

@bmaudlin  and @EHacking  - you two came to mind as people who would have great approaches. Would you be willing to share? 

If you appreciate my efforts, please give me a kudo
Accept as solution to help others find it faster.