Release Management

done4now

I am in a IT graduate role in big bank for the last year and I have been doing all sorts of roles from development, support, project management and release management.

I really dislike the support role of the job as I need to find the problem and fix it which I always struggle with it. Ive been given development tasks before and I struggle with them as I never understand the whole picture.

I have been asked told by my manager that if I want to continue as a developer I need to go home and do a lot of work on my own. But they need a release manager and they asked me would I be interested in it as I have been doing the role in parts for the last few months.

What I was wondering can anyone tell me about Release Management and what are the career prospects?

Mr. Loverman

I used to work for a smallish company where part of my job was being responsible for releases. So basically I would make a build, run automation on it/do some manual testing, and then release if I was happy. But I was also the web programmer and responsible for writing/maintaining their analytics software. I had to manage some servers as well.

So the first thing that jumps into my head is: if your only job is release manager, won't you spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs and be near the top of the list if they need to make people redundant?

I guess I don't understand how it can be a full-time job, but it is definitely possible I am misunderstanding you or missing something obvious.

done4now

From what has been explained to me I will be automating the build process so it can be done in as little steps as possible and doing the builds for the global teams (NAM, APAC and EMEA). There is always releases going out. Think I will be writing Unit Testing scripts as well.

Im guessing that if my spare time I will be doing small bits of development.

Mr. Loverman

Still doesn't sound like a huge amount of work (e.g. automating the build process is easy) but it sounds like you work in a busy office so maybe it is an important position.

I can only find two jobs for build engineers online.

jester77

There could be a lot of work in it. You would probably be responsible for the SCM and merging feature branches into the release branch and dealing with merge conflicts and failing unit tests. You would then be also look after releasing patches into the live system post release. You would also have to work close with QA to make sure that their test suite passes on the release branch. You would also be working a lot with the CI system and maintaining build scripts and depending on the types of project, also looking after the repository manager.

Jim2007

jester77 wrote: »

There could be a lot of work in it. You would probably be responsible for the SCM and merging feature branches into the release branch and dealing with merge conflicts and failing unit tests. You would then be also look after releasing patches into the live system post release. You would also have to work close with QA to make sure that their test suite passes on the release branch. You would also be working a lot with the CI system and maintaining build scripts and depending on the types of project, also looking after the repository manager.

Very true, but I'm struggling to see how someone who is having difficulties with problem solving and coding is going to metamorphas into someone who can solve deployment issues, code unit tests and deployment scripts - it requires the same skill set I would say!

everdead.ie

Release Management is responsible for creating the test environment working on things like cloning exisiting working environments so they can use that for testing.

Organising releases into the Live environment.

damonjewel

In my company, a large telco. The release manager is more of a project manager but higher up. Because of the technology involved it is better to do major drops of code changes and service introduction in as few interventions as possible. therefore the release manager would target a date of the next significant drop and work with the project managers to commit them to putting that date into their plans. You would coordinate the projects to the date, working as a go between for the commercial and technology sides of the business. Making sure testing plants, and resources are booked. It would be helpful to be tech savvy, but your main skills would be an ability to communicate, coordinate and plan. It's quite a pressurised role

Mrs OBumble

In a large multi-system companies, release manager tasks can take up a lot of time and energy making sure that every last sign-off is in place, and every last contingency is covered - as well as doing the builds etc. I suspect that this is what the OP is being offered. It's not the high-level release management that the last poster described, and it doesn't require the same levels of conceptual thinking as developing the code.