Release Planning

What is release planning?

Release planning is how you establish the playbook for the practical execution of your product strategy. It’s a key process in product management, serving as a bridge between the strategic vision outlined in the product roadmap and the practical steps taken by the development team to bring product updates to market.

It’s the process you follow to establish a detailed plan showing how and when features and fixes are expected to be ready for release.

Unlike a product roadmap, which focuses on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of product objectives, the release plan is concerned with the ‘how’ and ‘when.’ Your release plan supports your roadmap by showing the upcoming work cadence of whatever is prioritized next on the roadmap, and when those features are expected to be shipped.

It doesn’t just cover new features and improvements from your product backlog, however, but also ongoing work and bug fixes that don’t need to go through a discovery phase.

The plan is usually structured around sprints and release cycles, allowing for adaptability and continuous delivery, and thus supporting Agile methodologies. It is a dynamic document that helps teams align their efforts with the strategic product goals, ensuring that every release is timely and contributes to the overall product vision​​.

What is the purpose of release planning?

The purpose of release planning is to create a clear pathway for delivering incremental increases in value to your customers by regularly updating your product. It aims to align the development team’s efforts with business goals, ensuring that each increment meets customer needs and drives business outcomes.

A solid release plan facilitates better estimation of work, sets a cadence for delivering features, and provides a mechanism for inspecting and adapting based on feedback. It helps you to commit to workable solutions within a timeframe, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and enabling a more flexible response to change​​.

The main aims of release planning include:

1. Translating strategy into action: Release planning turns the strategic vision outlined in the product roadmap into actionable steps. It breaks down the broad goals of the product into specific features and enhancements that need to be developed, tested, and released.
2. Defining the “what” and the “when”: It specifies exactly what features and improvements will be part of a particular release and schedules when these will be made available to the users.
3. Synchronizing of cross-functional teams: Development, marketing, sales, customer support, and any other teams involved in the product lifecycle need to work in harmony to ensure a successful release. The release plan acts as a blueprint for these teams to coordinate their efforts.
4. Quality focus: Another key purpose is to establish timelines that allow for adequate design, development, and testing of the product, ensuring that each release meets expected quality standards.
5. Continuous improvement: Release planning is not a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process that enables continuous improvement. With each release, feedback is gathered, and the product is refined, leading to better product-market fit and user satisfaction.
6. Market alignment: Finally, release planning helps ensure that product releases are aligned with market changes, seasonal trends, and competitive movements. Timing releases to coincide with these factors can significantly increase their impact and success.

Why is it important?

Release planning is the process of translating your high-level product strategy into actionable items, ensuring that what the development team is building aligns with the company’s goals.

It provides a clear framework for when and how product updates will be released, fostering transparency and setting realistic expectations for all stakeholders. It also helps you to keep timelines and dates off of your product roadmap, allowing you the flexibility of strategically working to time horizons rather than strict deadlines.

By planning releases, teams can prioritize work, manage resources effectively, and respond quickly to market changes or new insights. Plus, it supports cross-functional collaboration, preparing customer-facing teams with necessary information and training, ultimately contributing to the successful launch and adoption of product features​​​​.

Effective release planning helps you to:

• Align development with business goals: It ensures that the development team’s work is aligned with the broader business objectives, which is essential for the company’s growth and success.
• Facilitate cross-functional teamwork: It helps to orchestrate collaboration across various departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer support, preparing them for the changes that new releases will bring.
• Improve product quality: Regular and planned releases allow for incremental improvements, which can be monitored and adjusted, leading to a better quality product.
• Enable better stakeholder communication: A release plan provides stakeholders with a clear picture of when new features or fixes will be available, managing their expectations and building trust in the product team’s delivery capabilities​​​​.
• Measure progress: Track the development against strategic goals, evaluating the success of releases in terms of user adoption and satisfaction.
• Increase market responsiveness: The practice of releasing frequently enables you to respond to market changes or feedback more swiftly, staying competitive and relevant.

Who is responsible for release planning?

In an Agile environment, the responsibility for release planning typically falls on the Product Owner. They are responsible for managing the product backlog, defining user stories, and ensuring that the development team’s work aligns with the product strategy.

The Product Owner plays a key role in translating the product roadmap into actionable tasks and oversees the sprint planning to ensure that each release adds value to the product and meets customer needs. However, this role can sometimes blend with that of a Product Manager, especially in organizations where roles are less defined or that are still transitioning towards Agile practices​​.

Release planning best practices

Best practices for release planning in an Agile environment encompass a range of strategies to ensure efficient and effective release cycles:

• Separate strategy and execution: Maintain a clear distinction between the product roadmap (strategy) and the release plan (execution), ensuring each process serves its specific purpose without overlap​​​​.
• Define the release cycle and its frequency: Decide how often the team releases and use story points to estimate the effort for items in the sprint backlog.
• Plan iteratively: Plan releases in iterative cycles, allowing for flexibility and adjustments based on feedback and changing priorities.
• Communicate transparently: Clearly communicate the goals, features, and progress of the release plan to all stakeholders to maintain transparency and manage expectations.
• Prioritize: Use prioritization frameworks to prioritize work based on value, complexity, and dependencies to ensure that the most important items are delivered first.
• Coordinate across departments: Collaborate with all teams affected by the release, including marketing, sales, and customer support, to ensure they are aware of and prepared for the launch.
• Continuously review: Regularly review the release plan to incorporate new insights and adapt to changes quickly, maintaining agility.
• Manage risks: Identify and mitigate risks early in the release planning process to avoid delays and ensure a smooth rollout.
• Maintain a customer-centric approach: Focus on customer feedback and user experience in planning releases to ensure that the product continues to meet and exceed user expectations​​.
• Incorporate feedback: Use the discovery phase feedback to ensure the development aligns with customer and business outcomes.
• Be adaptable: Understand that delays can happen, and keeping the team informed of planned work is crucial rather than promising firm delivery dates.

Head here for more advice on how to master your release planning from ProdPad’s very own Head of Product, Kirsty Kearney-Greig.

The differences between release planning and product planning

While release planning and product planning are both essential components of the product management process, they serve different purposes and operate on different scales and timelines.

Product Planning – Strategic

Product planning is the high-level, strategic process that defines what a company wants to achieve with its product. It involves setting long-term goals, understanding market needs, identifying the target audience, and establishing the value proposition of the product.

Product planning is the foundation upon which all other product-related decisions are made, including the product roadmap, feature prioritization, and, ultimately, release planning. This process is often visionary and directional, setting the course for the product’s lifecycle.

Key aspects of product planning include:

• Market and user research and analysis to understand customer needs and competitive landscape.
• Defining the product vision and strategy that aligns with business goals.
• Setting product objectives and goals to ensure the product brings value to the business.
• Determining the key problems to solve that will deliver on the product vision.
• Exploring the different product and feature ideas that could solve those important problems.
• Experimenting, testing, and learning.

Release Planning – Tactical

Release planning, on the other hand, is a tactical process that operates within the strategic framework set by product planning. It focuses on the execution aspects, detailing how and when the product’s features and versions will be delivered.

Release planning is more short-term and is concerned with the logistics of releasing the product and features to the customers. It is a plan of action that follows the strategic direction set by the product planning process.

Characteristics of release planning include:

• A more detailed and granular schedule of when features will be developed and released.
• Resource allocation for the development, testing, and deployment of product increments.
• Coordination with marketing, sales, and other departments for a synchronized product launch.
• Continuous monitoring and adjustment based on feedback, testing, and changes in scope.

In essence, product planning can be seen as deciding ‘what’ and ‘why’, while release planning is about ‘how’ and ‘when’. Both are critical to the successful delivery and evolution of a product, but they require different types of management and planning skills. Effective product management relies on the ability to perform both well, with release planning bringing the strategic vision of product planning to life.