Whereas change management concentrates on controlling changes, release management prepares the planned changes for distribution. Release management should be integrated into the configuration and change management processes in order to ensure that the releases and implemented changes are coordinated. Release management coordinates the activities of the service provider, suppliers and business cycles. The outcome of this is a plan for the supply of a release to the operational IT environment.

The aim of the release management is to deliver, distribute and monitor one or more changes in a release to the operational environment.

One of the key tasks of release management process is to coordinate all the participating resources in order to hand over a release to a shared environment. In this context good planning and management is a basic prerequisite for packaging releases, their successful distribution as well as for having the associated impact and risks for the business and the IT under control.

We recommend that all aspects of the release be planned in advance with the business. To this end the impact on the associated CIs must be evaluated and both the technical as well as the non-technical aspects be jointly taken into account.

For the purpose of transparency all release elements must be traceable and safeguarded to prevent their being changed. Only tested and approved releases should be accepted within the operational environment. 

For comparison see the Release Management Process according ITIL V3.