Rapid Release Process

Rapid Release for Periscope is defined as the release of small, discrete changes to our multi-tenant products that are put into PRODUCTION, UAT, TRAIN and DEMO environments between major release cycles.

• What is Rapid Release and how does it help us and customers?
  
  Rapid release is deploying minor changes to our software as soon as they are approved by QA, rather than waiting for a single large release. It makes it much easier for Tech Ops to deploy code, makes testing cycles faster for our major releases. Customer’s don’t have to wait months for small code changes or fixes they want.
  
  
• What products are eligible for rapid release?

At this time, only the following products are eligible for rapid release:

• What tickets are eligible for Rapid Release?
  
  Tickets can’t have a dependency to an ePro change (meaning, the code change has to operate with the current version of ePro in production).
  
  Significant functional changes, such as those that are made as part of Product Projects are not eligible.
  
  Severity 1 & 2 code fixes and our process for those do not change, as they will go out urgently regardless of product or Rapid Release definition.
  
  
• How will the company know which tickets or changes are being considered for Rapid Release?
  
  There is an internal dashboard containing the tickets flagged for Rapid Release. Individual tickets are flagged as such with a fix version of Rapid Release.
  
  
• What QA is done for Rapid Release elements and how do we know it successfully addresses the customer use cases?
  
  Rapid Release candidates will be tested the same way all tickets are and then tested in Stage against the current production version of ePro.
  
  
• Which tiers will Rapid Releases go to and in what order?
  
  Rapid Release will move from Stage to UAT, PROD, TRAIN and DEMO tiers when deployed (all at the same time).
  
  
• What happens if there is an issue with a Rapid Release change deployed to Production?
  
  Unlike a monolithic major release build, Rapid Release elements can be triaged or rolled back quickly. The triage, fix and/or rollback can be isolated to just the offending item if more than one change was made during a Rapid Release.
  
  
• How often will Rapid Release items go out? Will there be a schedule? How does it fit with 20-10-10?
  
  
  • Windows for Rapid Release for S2G, Source, Marketplace and Reconciler can occur any day of the week. Caveats are:
    
    
    • Cannot be dependent on an ePro change or if there is an ePro dependency
    • Cannot be done when there is a major/significant change in functionality
      
      
  • What will the communication plan be for Rapid Release?
    
    PHI Release Manager will send an email communication notifying PHI teams on a daily or weekly basis, and it will include the list of tickets being released and the products that are impacted.
    
    
  • Who is responsible for communicating with Customers? Support will be responsible for the communication of the updates to both Supplier and Agency customers through the customer portal and other channels, as appropriate.

Deployments:

Deployment/Maintenance Release Calendar:

• UAT/Train/Demo- Automatically updated when dev merges the changes.
• Production- Deployed by Release Management.