Improving Release and Patch Management Processes: An Empirical Case Study on Process Challenges

Sihvonen, Hanna-Miina; Jäntti, Marko

doi:10.1109/icsea.2010.42

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Also see release acceptance [38,39] Build and Configure Release Variety of methods; handled by software vendor. Fit-for-Purpose Testing [40][41][42] Release Acceptance [38,39] Roll-out Planning [22,23] Communication, Preparation and Training [23,25] Distribution and Installation [24,45] Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework [16]. ITIL represents a set of documents created by United Kingdom's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) in the 1980s with the goal of providing a common language between IT and business units and streamlining the improvement of IT service management processes.…”

Section: Release Management Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Organizations adopting ITIL define the structure and skills of their IT departments for a business-driven, top-down method of IT service management, improving end-to-end service availability [17][18][19]. Research on release management focuses on software vendor challenges associated with release planning [20,21], open source release support [22], service provision [23], release automation [24], and patch management [25]. Reference [26] proposed a software product development framework incorporating aspects of release management and addressing the process from the perspective of the software vendor.…”

Section: Release Management Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Typically, testing is performed by end-users, and the release acceptance is based on specific conditions which the released package must satisfy [44]. Reference [25] found that release package quality was poor due to lack of quality control acceptance procedures established by the customer during the release acceptance activity. To streamline this activity, [38] proposed a tool allowing end-users to collaborate with developers earlier in order to write, automate, and execute acceptance tests during the software development cycle.…”

Section: Releasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This activity, involving notifications to release stakeholders (including software development, release, and end-user teams), roll-out meetings, and training sessions, heavily involves the endusers in preparation of the release deployment. Clearly defined procedures are necessary to keep end-users informed of the upcoming release changes, and trainings must be organized before the release delivery [23,25].…”

Section: Communications Preparations Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Orchestrating End-User Perspectives in the Software Release Process: An Integrated Release Management Framework

Cleveland

Ellis

2014

Advances in Human-Computer Interaction

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Software bugs discovered by end-users are inevitable consequences of a vendor’s lack of testing. While they frequently result in costly system failures, one way to detect and prevent them is to engage the customer in acceptance testing during the release process. Yet, there is a considerable lack of empirical studies examining release management from end-users’ perspective. To address this gap, we propose and empirically test a release framework that positions the customer release manager in the center of the release process. Using a participatory action research strategy, a twenty-seven-month study was conducted to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the framework through seven major and 39 minor releases.

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Section: Release Management Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Release Management Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Releasementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Communications Preparations Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Orchestrating End-User Perspectives in the Software Release Process: An Integrated Release Management Framework

Cleveland

Ellis

2014

Advances in Human-Computer Interaction

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“…Regarding service transition, IT service release management process has been discussed from the perspectives of product portfolio management [13] and integrated release and patch management [14]. Furthermore, there are studies that have addressed success factors in ITIL implementations [15,16] and ITIL implementations failures [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the relationships between IT service management and IT service governance

Jäntti

Hotti

2015

Inf Technol Manag

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IT service provider organizations need both IT service management (ITSM) and IT service governance (ITSG) to ensure successful service provision for their customers. However, current service science literature has not adequately addressed how these activities differ from each other. Focusing solely on IT service management and ignoring service governance aspects may cause difficulties in measuring the performance of service management, defining and deploying the roles and responsibilities of service management, allocating the resources for right service improvements and adopting the service-oriented process culture. The research problem of this study is: How does IT service management differ from IT service governance? The main contribution of the study is a framework for IT service governance and a roadmap of IT service management frameworks and standards that can be utilized in establishing IT service governance activities. The theory-based framework is validated in an IT service change management case study with five Finnish IT service provider organizations. The results of this study may be used by top management, service directors and the IT service managers of IT service companies to better identify different aspects of IT service management and IT service governance.

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LAPPI: A light‐weight technique to practical process modeling and improvement target identification

Raninen

Ahonen

Sihvonen

et al. 2012

J Software Evolu Process

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Understanding the current state of the software processes and their problem points is important. Without this understanding, software process improvement (SPI) resources may be allocated to less meaningful targets. SPI work can be challenging to initiate especially in small companies where resources and knowledge of SPI are often limited. The aim of the developed technique, LAPPI (A Light-weight Technique to Practical Process Modeling and Improvement Target Identification), is to provide an easy to use, lightweight tool for process modeling and improvement target identification. The technique provides a suitable method that integrates with various SPI initiatives. The method used in the development of LAPPI is a nonformal variation of constructive research. LAPPI has been incrementally developed in multiple academia-industry collaboration projects and by industry actors themselves. Our evaluation of the LAPPI technique in 42 studies conducted in 31 companies indicates that the technique is suitable for modeling the current process and identifying the points of improvement in the process. Practical experience shows that LAPPI provides a cost-effective technique for process modeling and improvement target identification especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. It is most useful in the diagnosing phase of SPI. It helps the company to understand the current processes and the organizational interactions, and to create a process description baseline. benefits tends to erode managerial commitment and often demotivates employees [6,7]. Therefore, it becomes vital that companies achieve fast results and, moreover, allow staff members to gain hands-on experience in SPI initiatives. Motivation of the employees and committing them to the process improvement work can be challenging and many motivation factors should be taken into account [6][7][8]. In addition, lack of tangible results can lead to half-hearted and detrimental commitment from the management [9]. The availability of skilled and suitable staff members may also present a challenge, for example, the lack of SPI knowledge [10,11], and it may not be easy to find the right approach for the improvement initiative [12].Small companies often have problems initiating SPI projects. Small companies are troubled by the resource consumption and consider the SPI standards and approaches like CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) [13] and ISO/IEC 15504 [14] too heavyweight for their purposes [15][16][17]. To enable SPI in smaller software companies, many lightweight process improvement approaches have been developed (see, e.g., [18,19]). In addition, the ISO/IEC 29110 [3] standard has been developed for very small enterprises (with less than 25 employees) to help them apply the international standards, for example, ISO/IEC 15504 [19]. The majority of these approaches are process assessment methods based on the previously mentioned standards. However, small companies have problems with process assessments because of their often heavy resource requirements to pro...

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Improving Release and Patch Management Processes: An Empirical Case Study on Process Challenges

Cited by 7 publications

References 15 publications

Orchestrating End-User Perspectives in the Software Release Process: An Integrated Release Management Framework

Orchestrating End-User Perspectives in the Software Release Process: An Integrated Release Management Framework

Defining the relationships between IT service management and IT service governance

LAPPI: A light‐weight technique to practical process modeling and improvement target identification

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