Release processes

With release processes, you can define, run, and track release- and quality-related activities.

Overview

Use release processes to gain control and visibility into the activities that make up your release lifecycle. You can also use release processes to automate release-related activities.

Release processes let you identify issues and bottlenecks. You can also examine planned versus actual times for each stage and activity, and improve the planning for the same processes in the next release.

Example: Running a regression cycle involves a series of stages: Prepare test suites, plan suite runs, prepare and configure an environment for testing, run tests, analyze the results.

The release process entity provides a way to manage all of the relevant stages and activities among the different stakeholders.

Release process workflow

The release process workflow involves the following steps.

Step	Details
Create a process	Create a process from scratch or use a predefined template. You can also duplicate an existing process. For details, see Create a release process.
Define process stages	Define the process flow items, such as stages, actions, and quality gates. For details, see Define release process stages. For details on the process flow, see Release process flow.
Run a process	Run the release process. Run the process stages, perform actions, and evaluate quality gates. For details, see Run a release process.
Analyze the process	Gain increased visibility of your release processes and individual process flows using the timeline view. For details, see View process timelines. Track processes and process items by selecting the relevant item types in the widget configuration. The dashboard provides two DORA widgets that are based on a release process as an item type: Deployment Frequency and Change Failure Rate. For details, see DORA widgets. Identify and track overdue process items using the fields Start time delay and End time delay. For details, see Start time and end time delays.