Since we live in a world that heavily relies on technology, software development has become one of the most vital factors in our daily life. We pretty much have software for everything. Every industry depends on data and the latest software to remain relevant and competitive, while our entire science relies on software solutions that allow it to evolve.
In such an environment, organizations are facing a new challenge – how to speed up the process of releasing software. Numerous companies are trying to accelerate and simplify their release process.
The goal is simple yet complex – to deliver a more reliable product with more useful features but with less effort and in an affordable and timely manner. To do this and ensure that the clients get a reliable product, companies require a mix of manual and automated tasks in need of management, coordination, and scheduling.
Software development and release are complex tasks, requiring cooperation between teams, so it’s quite common that errors occur due to miscommunication, general ineffectiveness, time lags, and other risks.
With all this in mind, let’s see what organizations can do to accelerate the process of releasing software without making any mistakes.
1. Understanding the Release Process
Understanding and defining your release process is the first step in accelerating the entire operation. However, this will be quite tedious, as you’ll have to deal with two key factors: your application delivery process and release management.
Both factors need critical analysis to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses, pros, and cons. This analysis will give you valuable insight into the things that function and those that need to be abandoned, replaced, or fixed.
2. Establish a Release Cycle
Once you get a full understanding of your process, the next step is to establish a regular release cycle. It’s a short cycle, ideal for making any changes before moving on with the real deal.
That’s beneficial because:
- It allows you to create a routine that includes all of your teams
- It provides opportunities for your teams to engage with all the challenges of software release daily
- It provides a schedule for your customers and stakeholders and tells them what to expect by keeping them in the loop
3. Standardization and Automation
There’s no need to do things manually when you have so many amazing tools at your disposal. The software release is a process that includes a lot of repetition that you can easily eliminate by using the power of automation.
A good example of such a tool is JFrog. It’s a universal set of DevOps tools compatible with all major software technologies, and it will allow you to accelerate your software release without sacrificing security, quality, agility, or speed.
The point is to allow your valuable human resources to shift focus to your core mission. Automation also eliminates human error while standardization allows for a much higher level of consistency for your inputs and outputs.
The software release is a manual-intensive environment that requires many changes along the way. It’s these changes that pose a real threat. Fortunately, automation and standardization allow you to effectively change environments to make the necessary changes, with each deployment.
Tools like JFrog allow you to accelerate the delivery of binaries through your software delivery pipeline, safely and securely. A fully automated pipeline needs to be tested and configured only once. After that, you can make any changes you want, without any risks, errors, etc.
4. Optimization of Your Delivery Infrastructure
Creating and deploying your software and enabling people to use it all depends on your release infrastructure. It consists of all the elements and components needed to ensure a successful software release.
Such infrastructure typically includes:
- Build automation
- Continuous integration
- Test and deployment automation
- Environment provisioning
- Configuration management
While it’s recommended that you automate as many tasks as you possibly can, some of the work will still require human services. You have to make sure that your team members all have the required skills for the job at hand.
Continuous integration, for example, requires a high level of programming skills. Your release engineers need to have skills and knowledge in working with DevOps automation tools like JFrog, to deliver the wanted results.
The earlier you discover any missing skills, flaws, or hidden bottlenecks in your required automation, the better.
Conclusion
If you’re a software delivery organization, you know how much depends on your release management. The more you’re able to streamline this process, the better the results will be.
On top of all that, it’s also an excellent way to get ahead of your competition. Continuous delivery is one of the determining factors of your success. You can significantly accelerate your software release by using the latest automation tools.
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