What is Release Management?

Release Management is the formal process of sharing changes.

That’s it - in a nutshell.

But nutshells are hard to grasp and they don’t provide much value. Coincidentally, Release Management is also about providing value - consistently so.

I’ve used Release Management in my role as a Front-End Software Engineer. But it isn’t limited to software by any means.

We humans all crave consistency. We love habits and routines, especially the older we get, as they provide us with a stable piece of land amids the storms of life.

We are all Release Managers in our own way. For example:

A couple makes plans for renovating their house. They know exactly when and what will be changed. They document these changes - which, by the way, they are legally obliged to do in many countries. And they know that all builders, architects and stakeholders (aka them!) have signed off agreements to do things in such and such way.

This is Release Management: making consistent changes in a defined way and documenting them.

Applied to software development, we may recognize Release Management -or at least its byproducts- in things like version numbers, changelogs, deployment environments and client demos.

All these things have one thing in common: consistency.

About this book

I’ve been an active software developer since 2015. By many standards, that is a short time. They say it takes 10.000 hours to become a master at anything. Given 220 workdays per year and 6 hours per day on average of productive time, we’d need 7.6 years to attain this number. And one can argue it is no guarantee: for there are many who have practiced their craft all their life, only to be surpassed by a young genius at the end.

Technology is change. Change is progress, though not always immediate. And progress has a way of catching up to us.

What is written today may become irrelevant tomorrow. There is no certainty, only opportunity. And what matters is the intentions by which we make our acts.

My intentions for writing this book are to set my knowledge free. To share it with the world, so it may benefit others. At the end of the day, our life is ending - one minute at a time. Whatever empire of dust we build up, we won’t be able to take anything with us when we die. The kings of the old times have seen their palaces crumble to time, becoming tourist traps and eventually nothing more than sand.

I have seen my fair share of software become obsolete. I can only imagine how software developers from 50 years ago must feel, having seen their accomplishments fade into a blank page, a scrap container or a mere footnote in an essay that no one reads any more.

All is impermanent. Yet this doesn’t mean all is in vain. Dare to consider that all these creations have once had a profound effect on its users. They are the bedrock supporting today’s skyscrapers. And they will continue on as atoms of it. As a mythical constant like π (pi) used across a myriad of equations, they in turn used in many applications, serving many people, to develop cures for once fatal diseases, provide better living conditions for once hopeless regions and providing wonders like communication for the deaf and mute.

So too, this knowledge, however small and insignificant, can still be a vital support to develop the ideas of tomorrow.

May it benefit all.