What Are The Differences Between Build Management & Release Management

Build management is the process of creating software that is built, tested, and refined over time. This process includes defining how various pieces of software will be created and assembled. Release management is the process of planning and executing the deployment of a new release to customers or users. Both tasks are important in order to maintain quality control as well as deliver products on time.

Key Takeaways

• Build management is needed to create a product for release management
• Build management is also referred to as continuous integration (CI) or automated build (AB)
• The release management process ensures the timely and successful delivery of software and other product releases
• Release management helps to maintain and increase product quality and customer satisfaction
• The main difference between build management and release management is that during release management the product has been already created

What Is Build Management?

Build management is a workflow that includes the steps and tools required to take a software project from source code to release. A build can be defined as a set of programs and scripts that produce the executable code of an application or other system. Builds often include compilers, debuggers, code analyzers, and other tools.

Build management is also referred to as continuous integration (CI) or automated build (AB). While CI typically refers to the process of automatically building projects at regular intervals, AB is about running specific tasks based on triggers such as checking in code into version control or opening a pull request in GitHub.

This is an important consideration for any software project that needs to be deployed in various contexts or for different devices. It helps with things like keeping track of changes in the process of building or assembling a project. This is done by analyzing the specifications, identifying the work packages required for completion, and then assigning these packages to resources.

What Is Release Management?

Release management is the process of identifying and managing the changes, risks, and dependencies that affect a software release. Release management largely falls under change management and is thus focused on getting releases out to production as smoothly as possible.

This management process ensures the timely and successful delivery of software and other product releases. It helps to maintain and increase product quality and customer satisfaction, reduce production costs, and ensure regulatory compliance.

A release manager ensures that all necessary steps for releasing a product are completed within the required timeframes.

This is a way for companies to have more control over the release of their product by having a central repository with all development changes, changes in testing environments, and changes in production environments.

10 Differences Between Build Management & Release Management

Many people might not know what the difference between build management and release management is. Build management is the process of creating a software release from a fresh code repository, whereas release management is the process of deploying, building, and delivering a software release to its customers and end-users.

Here Are More Differences At A Glance:

1. Build management is the process of managing the development and deployment of software products. It starts with the creation of a product that developers will be able to release in a given environment. The build process includes a number of tasks, which often include automating a number of manual processes and creating automated tests for quality assurance.

2. Release management is the process of managing software releases from development to production. It involves coordinating all activities required to deploy software applications from different environments, such as testing or staging, to live production.

3. The main difference between build management and release management is that during release management the product has been already created.

4. The differences between release time and deployment time are that deployment can take place immediately after testing while release can occur anytime during or after development.

5. Build managers create new releases by checking out the latest version of the source code from a repository and compiling it into executable files while following various conventions such as linting or unit testing while Release managers deploy these compiled executables to end-users.

6. Release managers use various tools such as Puppet, Chef, Anaconda, Docker to manage releases whereas Build managers use tools such as Jenkins/Nexus/Gitlab CI, etc.

7. Release managers play a vital role in Agile or DevOps teams whereas Build managers do not necessarily need to be involved.

8. Build management is a task-based approach while release management is an event-based approach.

9. In build management, teams can focus on managing their dependencies, while in release management, teams need to manage all their resources in order to complete their tasks on time.

10. Build management tackles complexity in software development; release management tackles complexity in deployment.

Conclusion

Build management is about managing the contents of your build, while release management is about managing the deployment of your build. For example, when you release a build, you’re releasing the complete build to the “end-users”. The Build Management process is used to manage the development process of software development projects. The Release Management process is used to manage the deployment and its associated risks by using a waterfall or agile approach.

References: 1 https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-build-and-release-management/
References: 2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/build-management

Last Updated on October 27, 2022 by Magalie D.