The Engagement Manager must produce the Release And Deployment Management Procedures by tailoring the Capgemini standard procedures against the needs of the Service Engagement and the specifics of Client. A tailoring guideline may be used to facilitate this process. The procedures must be compliant with Capgemini standards and the contractual obligations with the Client. Information obtained from Client or incumbent should also be used as inputs while preparing the procedures.

The Release And Deployment Management Procedures must contain the set of activities required to efficiently manage Release And Deployment Management. These procedures must typically contain information pertaining to the process followed for developing, testing and deploying a release into the desired environment. It must also include mechanisms for monitoring and reporting on the release, managing escalations and the overall governance of the release activities.

The Release Manager must additionally develop release policies that summarize all rules for release classification together with detailing all attributes of a release and its work instructions. There can be various release classifications in an engagement. Few examples could be major release, minor release, emergency release, etc. The Release Policy may also consider:

• The expected frequency of a release. In some engagements releases may be a periodic affair. Releases may also be driven by certain events like release of patches or updates from a 3rd party. The Client and Capgemini should jointly agree when a release should be scheduled and the responsibility for the same.
• Types of deployment methods to be used. Few examples of this can be phased, big bang, push, pull, etc.
• Integration points with Change Management, Software Engineering Method and Technology Asset and Configuration management activities to ensure the integrity of baselines.
• The definition of and unique schema for identification, numbering and naming conventions for various types of releases (in conjunction with Technology Asset Configuration Management definitions)
• Scope of a release. This would provide guidance on how to club various changes that can be included in a release. Release Units also need to be defined specific to the implementation. These align to elements of the infrastructure which are normally released together, and i.e. a specific application may be a Unit which may be broken down into sub-units of code modules. The release units should be defined in a method that supports the plan or schema defined release policy or plan.
• Responsibility for release acceptance and sign-off.
• Handover process (if any) to be followed for handover of a release to support e.g. use of Quality Gates, a pre-determined checklist or a pre-implementation review ‘go/no go’ meeting, etc.
• Guidance on release planning.

The Release Manager must identify the appropriate roles for Release And Deployment Management. The identified roles must be aligned with the roles defined in the contract and should describe the accountability and responsibility for the key tasks of Release And Deployment Management. The skills required in the engagement and resource training needs with respect to Release And Deployment Management must be identified.

Establishing these procedures should ensure that the Service Delivery team and its relevant stakeholders understands and implements the process as per the expectations of Release And Deployment Management. These procedures should be maintained throughout the life of the engagement but should be revised if the standard processes are changed or the Client expectations get changed.