Project management Vs Release Management

I still remembered the time I just took up the role of release manager, the project team members always gave me a confused look. This was not their fault, they didn’t know why I was there. They already had their project manager breath down to their necks, and now came a release manager?

I know, this is one of the frequently asked questions from the IT people nowadays, what is the different between project manager and release manager? Or, I should put it this way – what is the difference between project management and release management.

Project managers practice PMP, release manager practice ITIL, period. Simple, huh? Let me give you a longer answer as below:

Project management is focused on the delivery of a project within a pre-defined scope, resource, budget and timeline. A project may result in a release.

Release management is the process to govern IT projects go from the development and test environment to the live environment. In short, release management is to manage the release of new/changed services. The changes can be software, hardware or both.

Project may happen once, but release can happen many times. For example, a project may have a number of releases. Each release can be a separate project. No doubt, project management and release management are very closely related.

Release management can help project management by defining the guidelines that each release must adhere to with regard to documentation, testing, acceptance, implementation, source codes check-in and etc.

A project by its nature will come to an end, but the releases will continue on in the production environment as a service or component of a service. Hence, release management tells you the routes to go from development to production.

Some IT management guru said that Release management takes a holistic approach to release, I strongly agree with it though it won't make me a holy man. Release management defines the procedures for every activity. The activities can be user training, production support briefing, communication to business users, post implementation support. The objective is to ensure a consistent set of standards are applicable to all releases. Also, by defining a standard set of procedures, release management helps to build “quality” into the process.

P/S: PMP or ITIL practioners can give your opinion.