What does an extraordinary release process look like?

Question

What does an extraordinary release process look like?

I ask because we keep having release related production problems. For example: - Code that was not supposed to be released is released - Code that runs on the test server does not run on the production server - Ops generates an alert for production but everyone ignores it

Pointers to books, articles, blogs, etc. on this topic would be helpful.

Answer 1

I'd say the fist step is to start using version control if your not, and if you are using version control research branching and tagging. Using branching you can keep code that isn't production ready out of production till it is ready, and only merge it into trunk when it is.

This is probably one of the single most important things to prevent the issues your mentioning.

Books:

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/svn/pragmatic-version-control-using-subversion

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/tsgit/pragmatic-version-control-using-git

The Joel Test: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

Once you get your version control under wraps, you should be a long ways towards avoiding the problems you mention.