The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Mising book?"

Release is the "forgotten process" of ITIL

skeptic — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:56:40 +0000

Agreed. Release is the "forgotten process" of ITIL, less so in V3 but still a long way from clearly defined and crisply interfaced with the other areas.

Release Build implies translate action plan into work orders

ianclayton — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:38:08 +0000

My take on the release planning, build, test etc activities is that these relate to the release itself and are post a similar 'build' at the end of design, where the elements of a service are assembled and tested as part of a post development quality assurance stage. Release must already be active 'building' as it is required to stage elements from the development environment to a controlled test or QA environment. In most Release 'best practice' guides (non-ITIL), the 'build' activities equate to the development of the work orders (tasks) specific to migrating the service, system, or change into production status.

The allocation of resources and scheduling of all build related activities (work orders) are authorized by change management.... The target change or new service is contained in a previous specification document (ITIL?) - sometimes called an 'action plan' or 'service configuration'

In the Service Management Body of Knowledge (SMBOK) a sequence of 'service configuration' (post-development pre-assurance), 'service offering' (post-assure, pre-deploy), and 'service instance' (deployed, in production, in commission/warranty stage) is provided representing the latter stages of a service - all controlled by Release and subject to Build activities!

ITIL V3 is EXTREMELY vague on how this all actually comes together, when Release is actually involved (can be as early as Strategy), within what governance framework, and working to what 'best practices'...

Building is in the scope of ST

Robert Falkowitz — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:14:39 +0000

Check out ST §1.3.2 p. 7 "This publication provides guidance for the development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into the production environment, including release planning building, testing, evaluation and deployment."

On the other hand, there is a comma missing after "release planning".

BOKKED may not be the forum

skeptic — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:51:08 +0000

BOKKED may not be the forum to discuss this, but you make an interesting point.