Release Management can cost as little or as much as you can afford. There are
three aspects to consider: expenditure, people and time.
You incur financial expenditure only if software tools are purchased for the definitive
software library and additional hardware is required to accommodate it. Specific
products are available to manage security and version control, but these are only
really needed in a software development environment or regulated industry such as
pharmaceuticals.
Release Management requires full time staff only if there is a large volume of new
services and upgrades requiring full-time effort for planning and execution. This
sometimes applies in large organisations. In a school, Release Management
activities should be part time and you should be able to allocate the roles and
responsibilities to existing members of staff. Roles and responsibilities are
referred to throughout the Release Management section, and are grouped together
in
roles and responsibilities.
The amount of time taken up by the Release Management process once it is
operational is difficult to quantify, as this will depend on the frequency of release of
new services in your school. It is worth investing time in the planning stages of
introducing new services and implementing them in a consistent way to avoid the
disruption and downtime that may occur later if they are badly executed. It is always
better to spend time on prevention rather than cure.
Remember to allow time also for the implementation and integration of the process
into normal day-to- day activities. We have created a
table of activities
to help you
plan the amount of time required.
