Release Manager: Job Description, Salaries

Release management in software engineering is a relatively new topic, but it is growing swiftly. Throughout the release lifecycle, this principle is about organizing, planning, and scheduling software delivery.

The goal is to provide a smooth release with little disturbance while streamlining the process required to bring software releases into production.

Today, the distribution of software and IT services, as well as continuous delivery, all depend on release management.

1. Release Manager vs. DevOps Release Manager

In the IT business, a release manager is responsible for overseeing the whole life cycle of software delivery. They must work with the team from the planning stage to deployment, via the development and testing stages.

The DevOps Release Manager, on the other hand, is in charge of arranging for rapid releases and developing shorter feedback cycles, in addition to coordinating closely with the IT operation and development teams throughout the whole process. To ensure that any issues are swiftly found and resolved, the DevOps Release Manager must work closely with the teams from the beginning of the project and use standard agile methods like PMI, SCRUM, and ITIL. DevOps and its tools must be familiar to the DevOps Release Manager.

2. Release Manager: Job Description

The release manager oversees informing the manager of the release management team of any changes. The software development and delivery process is scheduled, planned, and managed by the release manager in DevOps.

• You will oversee overseeing the DevOps team, developers, and IT operations to ensure that the services are delivered on schedule.

• You will be in charge of managing the release management lifecycle, which comprises planning the work of the associated teams, setting the release date and budget, and completing the release on time.

• You will supervise the program's release in coordination with the application development team, testing team, and production team when the testing stage and deployment stage are complete. To update the project-related information, you must keep these teams well-coordinated.

• To control the income for the release, you must choose how to employ release management tools wisely.

• Planning, testing, tracking, release, deployment, communication, and risk management will all be taken into account.

3. Roles and Duties of a Release Manager

The majority of your time will be spent on planning, testing, tracking, release, deployment, communication, and risk management, to put it in a broad perspective. Some details are as follows

• Work together with the appropriate development teams who are in charge of developing the automated tools necessary for developing and deploying the software.

• Arrange the CAB meetings so that the team may review the release timelines and discuss any potential roadblocks.

• Maintain logs for the build and release procedures, several notification lists, and dependencies.

• Improve methods for configuration management and offer software that facilitates the identification of new configuration management applications.

• Plan and deliver weekly activity updates for the rollout.

• Ensure that each release has an engineer assigned to it.

• Contact should be made with the releasing managers of various IT departments.

• Manage the Go-Live activities to deploy the software properly.

• Monitor the situation to spot any issues. Always work to improve the release process.

• Ensure that the release is planned and arranged in accordance with the constraints and spending plan.

• Schedule milestone reviews after each release and release readiness checks before to deployment.

• Create a plan for deployment and implementation in line with the release schedule.

• Schedule the delivery of the project's deliverables and the release life cycle.

• Communicate project-related details with other teams, such as schedules, needs, and deadlines.

• Coordinate the release schedule and the necessary resources based on the third-party apps, defect backlogs, scheduled releases, and infrastructure upgrades.

• Identify the risks that might push back the release and take action to address them so that neither the release's quality nor its intended scope suffer.

4. Qualifications Needed to Become a Release Manager

Given the vast technical knowledge required for the role of a release manager, you should be a master or at the very least an expert in some of the most important technical abilities. To encourage more effective team cooperation and communication, soft skills are also necessary.

• A working understanding of CD/CI (Continuous Delivery and Integration) pipelines

• project management experience

• B.Tech. in computer science, or a degree in a related field

• working knowledge of Agile and DevOps techniques

• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle

• Ability to leverage technologies for application release automation, such as Electric Flow, Puppet Enterprise, Build master, and Visual Studio Release Management.

• Proficient in computer programming

• Knowledge of operating systems, system architecture, and application infrastructure as well as familiarity with standard agile approaches such as Scrum, Waterfall, and Kanban.

  Soft Skills

  • Excellent communication skills,

  • Leadership qualities

  • Project management experience

  • Presentation expertise

  • Analytical and critical thinking skills

  • Team management skills,

  • Time management skills are all required.

5. Release Management Tools

Some of the following tools may be useful for release managers to know

• Jenkins is a popular continuous integration application that also provides release management features.

• Ansible is an open-source configuration management and application deployment tool aimed for IT specialists.

• All IT procedures may be continuously automated using Chef, a separate configuration management platform.

• By building trustworthy automated procedures that result in high-quality releases, these solutions, when included into IT operations, may reduce inefficiencies.

6. Salary Compensation of a Release Manager

According to the pay scale, the Release Manager salary might range from INR 829,072 to INR 2,00,000+ depending upon from organization to organization along with the employees count of respective organization and years of expertise.

A release manager's salary in the US can range from $73,000 to $160,000, with a typical pay of $105,000. Another approach to earn enough money in this industry is to work as a freelance Release Manager. The job and the client will determine the freelancer's hourly charge.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a release manager plays a crucial role in release management and typically makes the ultimate call on all crucial release-related decisions.