Section 9.1. Overview

9.1. Overview

Releasing a product seems as though it should be the easy part after you've finally got your product working, tested it, and documented it. In fact, making a product work properly somewhere other than the environment in which it was developed is an area where many projects fall down. This is unfortunate, because no one can use software that they can't even install.

If a release is something out of the ordinary for a project, then the whole project can become distracted by the intensity associated with getting the release just right. People may have made changes that break the release process, but it's hard to remember when those changes happened because it's so long since the previous release. Finally, the product escapes. Everyone is exhausted, and their only consolation is that they won't have to do that again for a while.

Just as regular automated builds help debug the build process before a crucial build is necessary, so too does the regular, automated creation of releases greatly help debug the whole release process. Automated release processes also help you avoid the temptation to give customers "engineering specials" just because it takes too long to create an official release (see Section 9.2.9, later in this chapter). Finally, an automated release process can help you ship products faster, since human error is reduced.