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To facilitate these efforts, ADP/SIS is leveraging BMC Software’s Remedy Action Request System (AR System). “CMM and ISO 9001 are about institutionalizing procedures, and you do that by using a tool that has the procedure built in,” says John Krug, Director of Configuration Management. “Remedy is our tool for institutionalizing our software release procedures."

More and more businesses today are requiring their suppliers and vendors to prove their ability to consistently deliver quality products and services by implementing the CMM and/or achieving ISO 9001 certification. The CMM, developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, provides guidelines that help businesses identify and implement best practices that increase the maturity of their software development processes. By leveraging these best practices, organizations enhance their ability to develop reliable software on time and within budget.

ISO 9001, from the International Organization for Standardization, provides quality management principles that businesses can use as a framework to guide them in improving performance. To attain certification, businesses must undergo a rigorous audit to prove that they have implemented processes that follow ISO 9001 guidelines.

For the past several years, the ADP/SIS configuration management staff has leveraged the AR System for software release management, turning a set of manual tasks into a fully automated process that integrates with other applications to facilitate the testing and release of new software modules. The result is a smooth-running release process that assuages any concerns their customers might have about quality and reliability.

“Clients can see that we use standardized procedures that minimize the risk of service disruptions when we need to modify or update the software they use,” says David Holland, Director of Configuration Management. “That gives them confidence in our ability to deliver the level of service they need."

Automating Software Release Management

Until 2002 ADP/SIS used a manual, paper-based system to initiate release requests, obtain required approvals, push changes through system, regression, and beta testing, and finally move a software release into production. This labor-intensive approach required IT personnel to track down the required approvers at each step of the release management process. Moreover, it often caused confusion if someone was working from an old document—wasting valuable staff time and delaying the completion of some changes. To remove inefficiencies in the system, the configuration management staff, which takes changes from the development staff and shepherds them through testing, began looking for a way to streamline and automate its portion of the process. The approach they chose was to create a release management application based on AR System.

The application is facilitating the flow of more than 250 release packages annually, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity. “The automatic workflow capabilities consistently keep the release requests moving,” Krug notes. “And because all the necessary information is kept in one place, anyone involved in the process can pull up a particular package and determine its current status.” Holland adds, “The application facilitates the process flow through software testing and release. And nothing gets lost along the way."

Built-in trigger mechanisms notify staff via email when action is needed to move items to the next step in the process flow. A typical release begins with AR System sending email messages to notify the project and product managers when a new package of code has been submitted for testing. Once the project and product managers approve the code, emails are automatically sent to the Quality Assurance (QA) and Configuration Management teams, notifying them that an installation is needed.

This automatic notification continues at each step of the process, from the developer’s audit of the installation to the product manager’s testing of the functionality, QA review, and product acceptance testing. With the application in place, developers can now put together a package for approval in five minutes, and the system automatically forwards it to the appropriate person. This eliminates the need for the developer to physically track down everyone in the approval process, saving a significant amount of time.

Integrating Processes for Maximum Efficiency

Software release management is one of many processes required to manage the IT environment effectively, and many of these processes are closely interrelated. With this in mind, ADP/SIS has integrated discrete processes to drive greater efficiency throughout IT. The company uses BMC Remedy Help Desk, for example, to track customer questions, problems, and requests. The staff wanted to extend this process to encompass defect tracking of internally developed software. They were able to do so easily by adding a form and modifying the workflow to accommodate it. The defect tracking application, which eliminates the need for each software project team to maintain its own list of open issues, is linked to the release management system to enhance both processes.

BMC Remedy Change Management tracks all IT changes, from a configuration change to a physical networking change to a client request to be run by the operations department. This application ensures that ADP/SIS can maintain service quality while effectively and efficiently making necessary changes to the IT infrastructure and software. Integration with the help desk and release management applications ensures that tickets from all three applications can be associated easily. For example, a client request submitted through the Web generates a help desk ticket, which is linked to corresponding change requests and release management packages. Consequently, IT can track such information as when and why a change was made.

ADP/SIS is leveraging BMC Software’s integration capabilities to connect the applications to the company-wide email system to provide automated alerts and notifications. As notifications are required throughout various processes–release management, problem resolution, defect tracking, and others–messages are generated automatically and passed to the email system.

The staff has also integrated the BMC Software applications with Microsoft Project, which the developers use to manage projects. “With the BMC applications, we’re able to capture information on time line estimates from Microsoft Project so that we can compare them with actuals,” Krug says. “This information shows us where we might be losing time so that we can remove any obstacles that slow down the release process."

Adapting Processes and Systems for Better Results

ADP/SIS has evolved its BMC Software implementation over time to accommodate changing business requirements. In 2002, for example, the development team moved to a new building, separating developers from the configuration management group. “The staff was spending time traveling between the buildings, in addition to having to track down the approvers,” Holland recalls. “The release management application was already working well in our group. So we made some changes in our business processes to eliminate paper even further, added electronic approvals, and began extending the application to other groups.” Today, everyone involved in the software release process uses the BMC Software application.

In 2004, ADP/SIS embarked on a major change in its release management process and adapted the applications to support the new procedures.

The initial workflow called for moving release packages from system testing into quality assurance. “Through analysis of the metrics we made a conscious decision to change the flow,” Krug explains. “We now put releases through the QA process first, and then move them into our product acceptance testing, which more accurately describes what we do in that testing phase. We then redid our forms to correspond to the new workflow.”

Other changes include bringing additional departments onto the AR system to ensure that they have access to the latest information and are aware of upcoming releases that may require action on their part.