2. 2
Product Release Management
Product release management is the process of planning, coordinating, and deploying a new
product, feature, or update to customers. It ensures that releases are smooth, timely, and meet
business and user needs.
Key Stages of Product Release Management
1. Planning & Strategy
o Define goals, scope, and objectives.
o Identify key stakeholders (development, marketing, QA, support).
o Prioritize features based on business value and customer needs.
3. 3
Product Release Management
1. Development & Testing
o Develop features according to specifications.
o Conduct QA testing (unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing).
o Ensure compliance with security, performance, and usability standards.
2. Release Readiness & Pre-Launch
o Prepare release notes and documentation.
o Train internal teams (customer support, sales, marketing).
o Conduct final tests in a staging environment before deployment.
3. Deployment & Launch
o Roll out the product in phases (e.g., beta testing, pilot launch, full release).
o Monitor real-time performance and fix bugs quickly.
o Implement feature flags for controlled rollouts.
4. 4
Product Release Management
5. Post-Release Monitoring & Feedback
o Track key metrics (user adoption, performance, errors).
o Gather user feedback for future improvements.
o Provide customer support and issue patches if needed.
Types of Product Releases
● Major Releases – Large updates with new features and enhancements.
● Minor Releases – Small updates, fixes, or optimizations.
● Patch Releases – Bug fixes and security updates.
● Beta Releases – Early access versions for user feedback.
● Continuous Releases – Frequent, small updates via CI/CD pipelines.
5. 5
Reactive Risk Management
■ project team reacts to risks when they occur
■ mitigation—plan for additional resources in
anticipation of fire fighting
■ fix on failure—resource are found and applied when
the risk strikes
■ crisis management—failure does not respond to
applied resources and project is in jeopardy
6. 6
Project Risks
What can go wrong?
What is the likelihood?
What will the damage
be?
What can we do about it?
7. 7
Proactive Risk Management
■ formal risk analysis is performed
■ organization corrects the root causes of risk
■ TQM concepts and statistical SQA
■ examining risk sources that lie beyond the bounds of the
software
■ developing the skill to manage change
8. 8
Seven Principles
■ Maintain a global perspective—view software risks within the context of system and the business problem
■ Take a forward-looking view—think about the risks that may arise in the future; establish contingency plans
■ Encourage open communication—if someone states a potential risk, don’t discount it.
■ Integrate—a consideration of risk must be integrated into the software process
■ Emphasize a continuous process—the team must be vigilant throughout the software process, modifying
identified risks as more information is known and adding new ones as better insight is achieved.
■ Develop a shared product vision—if all stakeholders share the same vision of the software, it likely that better
risk identification and assessment will occur.
■ Encourage teamwork—the talents, skills and knowledge of all stakeholder should be pooled
10. 10
Risk Identification
■ Product size—risks associated with the overall size of the software to be built or
modified.
■ Business impact—risks associated with constraints imposed by management or the
marketplace.
■ Customer characteristics—risks associated with the sophistication of the customer and
the developer's ability to communicate with the customer in a timely manner.
■ Process definition—risks associated with the degree to which the software process has
been defined and is followed by the development organization.
■ Development environment—risks associated with the availability and quality of the
tools to be used to build the product.
■ Technology to be built—risks associated with the complexity of the system to be built
and the "newness" of the technology that is packaged by the system.
■ Staff size and experience—risks associated with the overall technical and project
experience of the software engineers who will do the work.
11. 11
Assessing Project Risk-I
■ Have top software and customer managers formally
committed to support the project?
■ Are end-users enthusiastically committed to the project
and the system/product to be built?
■ Are requirements fully understood by the software
engineering team and their customers?
■ Have customers been involved fully in the definition of
requirements?
■ Do end-users have realistic expectations?
12. 12
Assessing Project Risk-II
■ Is project scope stable?
■ Does the software engineering team have the right mix
of skills?
■ Are project requirements stable?
■ Does the project team have experience with the
technology to be implemented?
■ Is the number of people on the project team adequate to
do the job?
■ Do all customer/user constituencies agree on the
importance of the project and on the requirements for
the system/product to be built?
13. 13
Risk Components
■ performance risk—the degree of uncertainty that the
product will meet its requirements and be fit for its
intended use.
■ cost risk—the degree of uncertainty that the project
budget will be maintained.
■ support risk—the degree of uncertainty that the resultant
software will be easy to correct, adapt, and enhance.
■ schedule risk—the degree of uncertainty that the project
schedule will be maintained and that the product will be
delivered on time.
14. 14
Risk Projection
■ Risk projection, also called risk estimation, attempts to rate
each risk in two ways
■ the likelihood or probability that the risk is real
■ the consequences of the problems associated with the risk,
should it occur.
■ The are four risk projection steps:
■establish a scale that reflects the perceived likelihood of a risk
■delineate the consequences of the risk
■estimate the impact of the risk on the project and the product,
■note the overall accuracy of the risk projection so that there will be
no misunderstandings.
15. 15
Building a Risk Table
Risk Probabilit
y
Impac
t
RMM
M
Risk
Mitigation
Monitoring
&
Manageme
nt
16. 16
Building the Risk Table
■ Estimate the probability of occurrence
■ Estimate the impact on the project on a scale of 1 to
5, where
■ 1 = low impact on project success
■ 5 = catastrophic impact on project success
■ sort the table by probability and impact
17. 17
Risk Exposure (Impact)
The overall risk exposure, RE, is determined using the
following relationship [HAL98]:
RE = P x C
where
P is the probability of occurrence for a risk, and
C is the cost to the project should the risk occur.
18. 18
Risk Exposure Example
■ Risk identification. Only 70 percent of the software components scheduled
for reuse will, in fact, be integrated into the application. The remaining
functionality will have to be custom developed.
■ Risk probability. 80% (likely).
■ Risk impact. 60 reusable software components were planned. If only 70
percent can be used, 18 components would have to be developed from
scratch (in addition to other custom software that has been scheduled for
development). Since the average component is 100 LOC and local data
indicate that the software engineering cost for each LOC is $14.00, the
overall cost (impact) to develop the components would be 18 x 100 x 14 =
$25,200.
■ Risk exposure. RE = 0.80 x 25,200 ~ $20,200.
19. 19
■ mitigation—how can we avoid the risk?
■ monitoring—what factors can we track that will
enable us to determine if the risk is becoming more
or less likely?
■ management—what contingency plans do we have
if the risk becomes a reality?
Risk Mitigation, Monitoring,
and Management
20. 20
Risk Due to Product Size
• estimated size of the product in LOC or
FP?
• estimated size of product in number of
programs,
files,
transactions?
• percentage deviation in size of product
from
average for previous
products?
• size of database created or used by the
product?
• number of users of the
product?
• number of projected changes to the
requirements
for the product? before delivery? after
delivery?
• amount of reused
software?
Attributes that affect
risk:
21. 21
Risk Due to Business Impact
• affect of this product on company
revenue?
• visibility of this product by senior
management?
• reasonableness of delivery
deadline?
• number of customers who will use this
product
• interoperability
constraints
• sophistication of end
users?
• amount and quality of product documentation
that
must be produced and delivered to the
customer?
• governmental
constraints
• costs associated with late
delivery?
• costs associated with a defective
product?
Attributes that affect
risk:
22. 22
Risks Due to the Customer
• Have you worked with the customer in the
past?
• Does the customer have a solid idea of
requirements?
• Has the customer agreed to spend time with
you?
• Is the customer willing to participate in
reviews?
• Is the customer technically
sophisticated?
• Is the customer willing to let your people do
their
job—that is, will the customer resist looking over
your
shoulder during technically detailed
work?
• Does the customer understand the
software
engineering
process?
Questions that must be answered:
23. 23
Risks Due to Process Maturity
• Have you established a common process
framework?
• Is it followed by project
teams?
• Do you have management support
for
software engineering
• Do you have a proactive approach to
SQA?
• Do you conduct formal technical
reviews?
• Are CASE tools used for analysis, design and
testing
?
• Are the tools integrated with one
another?
• Have document formats been
established?
Questions that must be answered:
24. 24
Technology Risks
• Is the technology new to your
organization?
• Are new algorithms, I/O technology required?
• Is new or unproven hardware
involved?
• Does the application interface with new
software?
• Is a specialized user interface
required?
• Is the application radically
different?
• Are you using new software engineering
methods?
• Are you using unconventional software
development
methods, such as formal methods, AI-based
approaches,
artificial neural
networks?
• Are there significant performance
constraints?
• Is there doubt the functionality requested is "do-
able?"
Questions that must be answered:
25. 25
Staff/People Risks
• Are the best people
available?
• Does staff have the right
skills?
• Are enough people
available?
• Are staff committed for entire
duration?
• Will some people work part
time?
• Do staff have the right
expectations?
• Have staff received necessary
training?
• Will turnover among staff be
low?
Questions that must be answered:
26. 26
Project: Embedded software for XYZ system
Risk type: schedule risk
Priority (1 low ... 5 critical): 4
Risk factor: Project completion will depend on tests which require
hardware component under development. Hardware component
delivery may be delayed
Probability: 60 %
Impact: Project completion will be delayed for each day that
hardware is unavailable for use in software testing
Monitoring approach:
Scheduled milestone reviews with hardware group
Contingency plan:
Modification of testing strategy to accommodate delay using
software simulation
Estimated resources: 6 additional person months beginning 7-1-96
Recording Risk Information
![17
Risk Exposure (Impact)
The overall risk exposure, RE, is determined using the
following relationship [HAL98]:
RE = P x C
where
P is the probability of occurrence for a risk, and
C is the cost to the project should the risk occur.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/sepmunitv-250410143711-2e36ed9c/85/SEPM-UNIT-V-pptx-software-engineeing-and-product-management-17-320.jpg)
