End-to-end process

During an end-to-end release process, BMC Release Process Management helps you to perform the following activities:

• Integrate the human-oriented and automation workflows
• Control the environment and configurations during the release process
• Integrate with your existing systems and processes
• Define users, their roles, and teams to segregate duties and access permissions.

Using BMC Release Process Management for an end-to-end release cycle

The following steps describe the basic process for using BMC Release Process Management. Your process might vary depending on your applications, environments, team size, and frequency of releases. However, the essential setup and operation remain the same.

1. Log on to BMC Release Process Management as an Administrator so that all the tabs and all the user roles are visible during this setup task.
   The Dashboard page opens. On the dashboard, you can see all applications (in the Applications tab) and all requests (in the Requests tab).
2. On the Applications tab, click Create Application to add a new application.
   After creating an application, you can edit the application from the dashboard.
3. On the Environments tab, click Create Environments to add new environments for your application. 
4. From the Environments tab, Add components and map them to servers.
   Servers are infrastructure components. Servers can be virtual, physical, load balancers, JEE servers, clusters, and other types.
5. Associate components with environments.
   On the Plan tab, you can see what happens with your application in different releases.
   A plan can have several stages. Add as many stages as required for your release. For example, add stages for development, quality assurance (QA), production, and deployment.
6. Create a run by selecting a request from a plan stage.
   Each request consists of one or several actions called steps. Steps can be manual or automated and can run in parallel or sequentially for a single request. If required, add more steps to a request. You can assign specific people or a group to the request. You can start requests manually or schedule the start. You can see the current status of a request on the Requests tab.
7. If your build has defects on the output and, therefore, you cannot promote the build to the production stage, change the build status to Problem and add an appropriate comment.
   For example, you find that an important link is missing in the application. Make a problem record in the system and all team members see the updated build status to make necessary fixes.
8. If your build fails, if build performance is below expectations, or if a certain functionality does not work, create a new plan.
   BMC Release Process Management allows you to define plan templates with plan stages and predefined requests. With this feature, you can easily create new plans and new plan templates or add new stages to the existing plan templates.
9. Start the plan to begin the release process.
10. Verify the request parameters, including environment and components versions, and then start the request.
    When the request starts, all required tasks start automatically. During the request execution, application components are deployed to the specified environments. With a request, your application goes through the various stages.
11. At the final stage, verify that the application is completely functional.
    Start the final deployment request to deploy the application to the production environment.
12. On the production environment, reference any additional actions in a changed ticket.
    Tickets track down the code readiness and deployment. At this stage, you can deploy different application component versions to different environments. You can automate the tickets change approval.