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Product Release Process

The product release process consists of the following stages:

• Stage 1. Product Marketing begins the release cycle by defining product features, entering those features into the system, determining which features will be implemented, and developing marketing requirements documents (MRDs).
• Stage 2. Engineering builds the features. Engineering defines the tasks required to implement the features, builds the features, and uses the system to track task completion.
• Stage 3. Quality Assurance (QA) defines test plans to test the new features, and uses Release Manager to track the test plan development. QA then tests the features by executing the test plans in various operating environments, and records the details of each test iteration.
• Stage 4. Technical Publications documents each feature in the appropriate publication and uses Release Manager to track document development status.

In practice, these stages are not rigidly sequential. At any given point in the release development cycle, activities for several of the stages may overlap as teams pursue their goals simultaneously.

As illustrated in Figure 27, Stage 1 (Product Marketing), Stage 2 (Engineering), Stage 3 (Quality Assurance), and Stage 4 (Technical Publications) all lead toward the final stage, Ship.

Figure 27.  The Product Release Process