In a current project, I worked with the software developer last week to create a software release plan. The release plan serves to visualize the order in which software will be developed and when it will be available at a certain maturity level. The project I'm managing is managed using agile methods. Nevertheless, release planning is important.
What does my release planning look like?
For confidentiality reasons, I can't disclose the release plan for my project. However, I can show the structure used for it. I've redesigned and simplified the release plan so that the principle is clear.
In this example, the software is divided into seven releases, R1 to R7. Each release has a purpose, which is listed directly below the release name. A rough completion date is now estimated for these releases. The advantage of the interim dates is that the work packages are significantly smaller than for the entire software. This allows for better estimation. The release plan thus serves as a first rough roadmap towards completion of the software. The software architecture and the features to be implemented form the basis for release planning. These are recorded under features and sensibly assigned to the releases. The sequence and dates must, of course, be coordinated with the overall project and the needs of the stakeholders.
Tooling is required for the different releases. The required tools are also included in the release plan. This ensures that you know exactly when which tooling is needed. Finally, there is the question of what needs to be tested with each release. This is answered in the last line.
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| Dipl.-Ing. Goran Madzar, Partner, Senior Systems Engineer E-mail: madzar@medtech-ingenieur.de Phone: +49 9131 691 240 |
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Why release planning?
I always work with a release plan, and it's worked very well for me so far. Here are the reasons for this:
- A timetable is helpful to avoid losing track.
- The release plan makes the work packages transparent and visible to others.
- You can exchange information with other project participants via the release plan.
- Breaking down the entire software into releases helps with effort estimation and project controlling.
- Even early versions of the software are built as releases (on the build server) and documented accordingly.
- Tests and code reviews take place during development and do not lead to unexpected additional work at the end of the project.
- A release plan helps plan integration tests.
- In agile projects, the release plan serves as a guide for the backlog and sprint planning.
Conclusion
For anyone with a larger software project, I highly recommend release planning. The release planning tool is also applicable for system projects and hardware development. For software projects, in addition to release planning, I also use a checklist to track the software's completion status. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to contact me.
Best regards
Goran Madzar