Software release management challenges in industry: An exploratory study

Abstract

Release management has an essential role in the success of large software projects and there is no doubt that correct and efficient management of producing a new release can help the quality of the product and the satisfaction of the customers to a great extent. However, there is still problem in many companies for generating a new release, despite all the necessary resources like human, financial, and time resources, sometimes a new release has a lower quality than the older ones. This can be because of the lack of management in release planning. This research shows some possible challenges that can affect management of software release projects. In other words, the study investigates what issues need to be strengthened in management of release for a better release in software companies. This study is an exploration of software projects in small companies in Malaysia. This research was conducted to investigate and understand effective challenges in release management that have been identified by effective role players in release management within software domain. In this paper, developers and managers of eleven small software companies in Malaysia were interviewed to find out the important challenges that affect release management. The study found some important challenges such as: types of release, automation of release planning, tools, foreseeing new releases, release managers, proper understating of requirements and release policy. These are important in release management and their improvement has great effect in release management, which leads to a successful release.