Automating Release and Deployment—ALM, ITIL, and ITSM

that can, in turn, be run by an end-to-end job stream.

Deployments Can Be Complex
Make no mistake, many deployments are extremely complex and you may find yourself only able to automate some parts of this effort. Deployment frameworks that implement application release and deployment automation provide the structure to help manage this complexity. This effort often involves managing many changing parts and even dealing with rapidly changing architectures. This is especially intense when the technology being built is very new—often with its own risk and changing requirements. Deployments can be tamed despite the level of complexity,.

Deployments Can Be Tamed
By breaking the deployment effort into manageable chunks, you are also able to improve traceability and visibility including IT governance. Application release and deployment automation tools provide a convenient approach that allows you to see which steps have been completed and which ones still need to be executed (or perhaps even re-executed). Compliance is also served by this approach by providing an independent build capability that may meet your audit requirements for separation of controls. IT governance and compliance are essential, although the application release and deployment automation tools framework can also be moved upstream to directly support development.

Development Benefits from Deployments
The application release and deployment automation tools framework can be moved upstream to directly support the application development effort. This is accomplished, in part, through continuous integration, including deployment to test environments and, of course, smoke testing. Development can benefit from deployment automation and even warrants design considerations to help realize the synergy of automated deployments. 

Deployment-driven Development
Just as test-driven development has become extremely popular among many developers, so too is designing an application so that it can be easily deployed. The scope of this effort is generally just to ensure that the application can be deployed in a reliable and consistent way. These considerations directly support rapid iterative development and result in improved productivity and quality. This work does take some effort, but it yields considerable benefits from its successful implementation.

Conclusion
Your best approach is to start small and iteratively develop your automation based upon a checklist. Make sure that you consider the big picture throughout this effort and by all means adopt a comprehensive application release and deployment automation framework to help you manage this effort’s inherent complexities. Your reward will be improved traceability and transparency supporting IT governance and compliance. You will also see your team better able to support rapid iterative development along with improved quality and productivity.