Thanksgiving is right around the corner, we can't help but think about our favorite things this time of year. We have opportunities to see family, friends and relatives, enjoy good food, and talk about everything that happened throughout the year. It is great to catch up and visit about what's happened, and what's going to happen. It's a time when families and friends reflect, collaborate, and even begin planning for the next year (because all families get along perfectly, right?).

What if you had a holiday table year-round for your organization?

If a project is delayed, or a change needs to be made, wouldn't it be nice to update the entire plan and everyone on the team at once?

Atlassian's Portfolio for Jira is the solution. 

The core of Jira Software is a workflow engine. It allows you to track issues and tasks in a predefined, customizable workflow. Now, take this awesome workflow capability, and lay a forecasting and visualization tool on top of it - that's Portfolio for Jira. Atlassian’s Portfolio for Jira is the road mapping and visibility tool used to forecast and track long-term plans, increasing visibility and business alignment. Portfolio provides a living, breathing plan for teams and leadership to stay up-to-date on existing plans, all while forecasting new long-term plans.

The best part? It's not just for software teams. 

Portfolio for Jira organized existing marketing tasks (entered as issues) into releases and themes, giving our entire team the visibility we needed to stay on track.

Teams that can benefit from Jira Software: 

• Human Resources
• Operations
• Marketing
• Procurement
• Legal
• Sales
• And more 

Because we track just about everything we do - including marketing activities - in Jira, the marketing team at Praecipio Consulting was able to use Portfolio for campaign planning and execution. As a test case, we launched a product marketing campaign for our newest add-on in the Atlassian Marketplace, Turbo Kit for Jira. Portfolio for Jira helped our team plan, forecast, manage, analyze, track and report on our campaign efforts. 

Change happens – all the time. Portfolio can help you, your team, and leadership stay well-informed on project and planning statuses, and it can also help you see the big picture and track business goals (not just your team or department!). It is the ultimate visibility tool. 

We'll dig into this a little more in our upcoming webinar Portfolio for Jira: Best Practices. Be sure to grab a seat at our table to learn more!

Learn more about Portfolio for Jira in the Atlassian marketplace.

We’re excited to announce the release of Atlassian Confluence’s Team Calendars 2.3. For this Team Calendars release Atlassian focused a lot on helping you stay up to date with upcoming events in your team.

Here’s a list of highlights for this release…

Upcoming Events View Atlassian’s created a new upcoming events view in the Team Calendars macro. It’s great for keeping your team informed of leave, travel or upcoming Jira project milestones. Embed it on your team homepage, or your project status page:

Upcoming Events In Confluence Summary Email Confluence 4.2 introduced weekly/daily summary email, helping you stay on top of popular and important content right from your email. Team Calendars now integrates nicely to these summary emails so you can stay updated with upcoming events in your team, project or company events right in your inbox:  Learn more about using Jira Calendars to track your upcoming releases and issue dates.

Improved Confluence 4 Editor Experience As of Team Calendars 2.2, Atlassian’s stopped adding new features for Confluence 3.5.x. You can now start taking advantage of all the new 4.0 editor plugin points. Quickly Switch Calendar Views Now that newer versions of Team Calendars support Confluence 4.0 or greater, you can start to make use of some of the Confluence 4.0 editor plugin points. So you can now quickly change calendar views using the editor property panel. See Calendar Names Previously, when you embedded a calendar on a page you would see something like “calendarID=349834j232″ in macro parameter list for the macro – which wasn’t helpful in identifying what calendars were embedded. As of Team Calendars 2.3, you will now see a preview of the calendar name(s) that you have embedded.

Other Improvements For People Calendars, we now show the event summary in month and week views for some more context To avoid any silly mistakes, Atlassian’s added a delete confirmation if you try to delete an event from the edit event dialog

Release Notices

• Reminder: Team Calendars 2.2 was Atlassian’s last feature release for Confluence 3.5.x. Only critical bug fixes will be ported back to Team Calendars 2.2.x. These new features are available on Confluence 4.0 or greater.
• The Email Summary Integration feature requires Confluence 4.2 or greater.

Upgrading to Team Calendars 2.3

Here’s Atlassian’s Matt Hodges’ take on Atlassian Confluence’s best additions of 2011, which he says “paved the way for the future of online collaboration:”

2011 was the year Atlassian satisfied more than 2,235 of our customers’ votes for new features and improvements with three of our biggest releases, ever. 2011 was the year Atlassian took Confluence to the cloud with our new OnDemand platform, made it even more affordable for small teams, and started to get you new features, faster.  2011 was the year a new era in content collaboration was born.

Taking a page out of Ken’s book, here’s my pick of the starting XI of 2011 for the Confluence Family.

Keeper – The Anchor

No. 1  – A Faster, Richer, Simpler Editor

Suitably, this position is filled by the brand-new editor that shipped in Confluence 4.0. On-top of a brilliantly simple design, it’s packed full of rich editing features that make it lightning fast and able to satisfy two of your top 10 most voted feature requests – Merge Table Cells and Copy and Paste Images.

Defense (4) – A Solid Foundation

Any winning team needs a strong defensive line. In 2011 Atlassian built and improved upon four rock-solid pillars to ensure Confluence continues to thrive in 2012.

No. 2  – Easier Connections to Active Directory, LDAP, and Crowd

Connecting Confluence to an external user directory used to be painful, whether it was Active Directory, other LDAP servers or Atlassian Crowd. You had to edit XML files, and the configuration options were limited. Confluence 3.5 brought a simple, powerful , and flexible directory management interface and support for nested groups, another top 10 most voted for feature request.

No. 3 – Stronger Jira Integration

Confluence is great for collaboratively defining specs. Jira‘s perfect for tracking the tasks that need to be completed to make those specs a reality. In Confluence 3.5 Atlassian made it easy to link the specs you develop in Confluence to the actionable issues you track in Jira, without leaving the editor.

Since more than half of Confluence customers also use Jira Atlassian wanted to reduce complexity with your setup and give your users one username and password for both applications. With the release of Confluence 3.5 and Jira 4.3 you can now manage all your users in one place by allowing you to delegate Confluence User Management to Jira.

No. 4 – New Installer with Guided Upgrades

With new releases coming frequent and often Atlassian wanted to help you get new features to your users, faster. Much to the delight of any sysadmins that are looking after Confluence, Confluence 4.0 brought with it new guided installers for Windows and Linux.

No. 5 – More Plugin Points for Developers

Confluence 4.0 was designed to allow for constant innovation and improvement. Atlassian worked closely with our amazing partners to make sure they can take advantage of the power of the new editor. The latest version of Gliffy is an excellent example of how plugin developers can deliver a more powerful and most importanlty, intuitive user experience in Confluence.

Midfield (3) – The Collaborative Engine

Soccer is a team sport. It’s ultimately a collaboration amongst players that leads to a result. Midfield starts the plays. They facilitate the collaboration that helps win games. In 2011, Atlassian added 3 new features to help users share and discover the rich content they create to foster collaboration and achieve better results.

No. 6 – A New Way to Share

Tired of copying and pasting Confluence links into emails? Atlassian was too, so in Confluence 3.5 they added a ‘Share’ button to every page and blog post. Then in Confluence 4.1 Atlassian gave you a simple keyboard shortcut – ‘S’ – so you can bring right people into the discussions and projects that are taking place in Confluence without picking up your mouse.

No. 7 – Autowatch Content You Care About

Have you ever forgot to watch a page that you’ve created, edited, or commented on? Autowatch ensures you are always kept in the loop by automatically watching any pages or blogs posts that you contribute to. You’ll never miss another play again.

No. 8 – Familiarly Social @mentions

@mentions are a great way to notify other users about content and conversations they should be involved in. Best of all, they work just like Twitter and Facebook. When mentioned, users receive an email notification so they can jump right into Confluence and start contributing.

Strikers (3) – The Cutting-Edge

There are some features that are game-changers. They kick goals and win games. That’s how I like to think of these three features Atlassian gave you in 2011.

No. 9 – Autoformatting Magic

With the new editor in Confluence 4.0, came more power and speed thanks to Autoformatting. Type wiki markup and watch Confluence convert it to rich text, on the fly. Bold, italics, strike-through, underline, headings, lists, emoticons, tables – it all works.

No. 10 – Professional Image Effects

Creating content that looks good has never been this easy. Click an image and choose from a set of professional effects. That’s it. Whether it’s screenshots in your release notes or snaps from your company’s holiday party, Image Effects makes everyone look like an editing pro.

No. 11 – Instant Autoconvert

Autoconvert takes the links you paste into the editor – Confluence pages, Jira issues, YouTube videos, Skitch images, Flickr photo streams, and Vimeo videos – and transforms them into the dynamic content you desire. Autoconvert will save you valuable time everyday, helping you get things done, faster.

Off the Bench – Awesome Additions

There when you need them, your substitutes can fill the holes that pop up during play and change the game. They add the extra flare that’s sometimes needed to win. 2011 was a year Atlassian saw some incredible add-ons – new and old – jump off the bench and shine.

No. 12 – Manage Leave and Track Projects with Team Calendars

In June, at our third annual Atlassian Summit Atlassian revealed a brand-new add-on for Confluence – Team Calendars – where people, projects, and content meet. Since then Atlassian’s given you a new Team Calendar release, 30 days or less…guaranteed. Our two most recent releases delivered the new features you’ve been asking for – now you can share your custom date fields from Jira and add multiple people to a People Calendar event.

No. 13 – The SharePoint Connector Meets Confluence 4.0

That’s right, just last week Atlassian released version 1.5 of the SharePoint Connector. Compatible with Confluence 4.0, the SharePoint Connector takes full advantage of the new Confluence editor to make SharePoint integration easier to discover and use.

No. 14 – Get Schooled at Atlassian University

Also revealed at Summit 2011, Atlassian University is an online training tool that teaches your company how to use Confluence through videos and step-by-step interactive tutorials. With over 40 self-paced classes, it’s the fastest and most intuitive path to becoming a master of Confluence.

No. 15 – Incredible Add-ons

Confluence 4.0 paved the way for plugin developers to provide a more natural, richer, and intuitive user experience. Here are some stand-outs:

• Scroll Wiki Forms for Structured Content
• Tasks & Approvals with Ad hoc Workflows
• UI Mockups with Balsamiq
• Number Headings, Any Way You Want
• Custom Designs with the Original Theme
• Google Docs Connector for Confluence
• Arsenale Lockpoint for Controlled Attachment Locking

What Will 2012 Hold?

There’s no doubt it’s been a big year for Confluence, our biggest yet. Atlassian has an awesome team that continues to grow and execute. Thank you to our customers, new and old, and the extended Confluence community – users, experts, and plugin developers. Happy Holidays and safe New Year from the Confluence Team.

Bamboo 3.4‘s ready for download and ready to spread a little joy for the holidays. This release provides some gifts for Atlassian’s Git users, and will bring joy to those expanding their continuous integration process into the cloud.

What’s New in Bamboo?

Improved Git Support & Compatibility

Git users can get more out of Bamboo during their holiday break. Satisfying many votes from our Git users, Bamboo’s integration with Git’s now compatible with Git submodules. Git submodules are simply a reference to another repository at a particular snapshot in time.

• Ruby, Python, and Javascript software projects often have dependencies on third-party libraries
• Java developers need specific versions of a library in java that have not been released

The new support for Git submodules allows Atlassian users to structure your projects the way you want, and makes it easy to build multi-module projects. The full capabilities of your Git client are now at your disposal for Git-based development. Simple and powerful, just like Git!

Note: Building with Git submodules requires that you have a native Git client and add it as an agent capability in Bamboo. If you’ve not configured your agent capabilities to use your native Git client Bamboo will use the embedded Git client (which doesn’t support submodules).

Curious about Git submodules and how you can use them? Learn about Git submodules here.

Share Repositories

The holidays are all about sharing, so Atlassian thought repositories in Bamboo should join the fun. In Atlassian’s previous Bamboo release, Atlassian introduced the ability to monitor and check out code from multiple repositories. Multiple repositories in Bamboo are great for both small projects that wish to build and include externally developed open source software as part of their project, and large projects that consist of multiple modules located in different repositories. Whether you are working on a small or large project, you may be using the same repositories across multiple build plans in Bamboo. Following the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle, you can now share your repositories across these plans. Bulk manage repositories across multiple plans with a single configuration change. For admins, that means you don’t have to edit each plan/job to change a repository. All you have to do is go into the Shared Source Repositories, and make your changes there.

• Changing working branches: post release, you may want to change the working branch. Now you don’t have to go into each job and update the Source URL manually.
• Changing servers: if you are moving servers and changing base URLs, simply change the base URL in one place.
• Changing passwords: admins update SCM passwords (every month) as per company policy; now you don’t have to edit each plan/job to reflect those changes.

A huge time saver for those trying to keep repositories in sync across multiple plans.

Grow in the Cloud – Elastic Agents with Windows Support

Give your team the ultimate gift, more build power. For those of you taking advantage of elastic agents in the Amazon EC2 cloud, Atlassian now has Windows and .NET support.

Growing capacity
Considering growing your Windows instances without having to install Windows? It all comes within an Amazon EC2 image. After the image is spun up, you can be easily connect to your instance with a Windows Remote Desktop application from any operating system.

Windows application testing
Windows instances from Amazon are great for any Windows installer testing. Like a typical VMware image, an EC2 image can easily be discarded after use, which is important because some Windows applications leave too much left over in the registry. If you need to test Internet Explorer for your web front end tests or Microsoft SQL Server for your database backend, it’s all possible on Amazon EC2.

Saving installed applications
Just like Linux AMIs, you can install any packages, add software, and make system configurations. Easily save these changes to your new AMI image, which can be added to your Bamboo EC2 Image configuration.

Windows EC2 with Amazon and Bamboo allows for elastic growth to meet your demands.  Don’t have enough VMWare hardware to go around? Expand your build system into the Amazon cloud, along with Bamboo’s elastic agents.

Editor’s note: Please note the total coolness of these Confluence 4.1 features, *in addition to what’s listed below*: pimping your images, autoconvert of content from the likes of YouTube, Google Maps, Vimeo, Flickr (paste a URL, Confluence will turn into content automagically), and find and replace. This is awesome stuff – so make sure you’re sitting down and holding onto something!

Who doesn’t like a big Christmas stocking packed with goodies? It’s the season of giving and, this week, you’ll be able to rip open Confluence 4.1 and get your paws on all the new features packed into this big release. Atlassian’s Ryan already peeled back the covers on Image Effects – in this post Atlassian gives you a sneak peek at 5 more improvements coming your way in Confluence 4.1. Like every Confluence release, there’s something for everyone.

1. Use Any Character in Page Titles

Satisfying many of your votes, Confluence 4.1 removes the restrictions on characters in page and blog titles. This allows more descriptive page names and generally removes restrictions when creating page titles and naming your content.

2. Set a Global PDF Stylesheet

Fulfilling 90 more of your votes, Confluence 4.1 let’s you set a custom PDF stylesheet at the global level, just like custom layouts. When a PDF Space export is requested, it will fall back to this global stylesheet if there is no specific individual Space stylesheet defined. This means users won’t have to re-apply the same stylesheet to all their individual spaces, if they primarily want one look and feel – perfect for enforcing company-wide styling guidelines.

3. Follow Your Network On the Dashboard

Think about how you work – usually you work closely with a handful of people everyday – people in your immediate team, direct reports, and stakeholders in other teams. Just like Twitter, you can follow these people in Confluence to build you own ‘Network‘. In Confluence 4.1 it’s easy to stay-up-to-date on what your Network’s been up to with a new tab on the Dashboard.

4. View and Filter Attached Files in a Space

When you want to display all the attachments of a Page on a Page, you can use the regular Attachments macro. A new Space Attachments macro in Confluence 4.1 lets you display all of the files attached to the Pages in a Space, in a table view and filter them by file type. Perhaps you have a bunch of training files attached to Pages in a Space. No you can list them all on one Page to aid discovery.

5. Translations Made Easier

For those customers working on translating the user interface, Confluence 4.1 has a new feature to make your job easier. After visiting the Confluence Dashboard, just add this text to the end of your Confluence URL and press ‘Enter’.

Atlassian’s Team Calendars development team has been working hard to make Team Calendars the glue between Jira and Confluence. They’re excited to announce that their next major release - Team Calendars 1.6 - is available for download now!

Since Team Calendars 1.0, you’ve been able to map default date fields in Jira – issue and version due dates – on a Jira Calendar for everyone to see in Confluence. This was really helpful for Product and Project Managers to visualize the schedule of a project. However, folks have since told Atlassian that these are not the only dates important to teams. Atlassian listened, and with the release of Team Calendars 1.6, they’ve extended the Jira Calendar type to support your custom date fields in Jira.

Display Custom Date Fields from Jira on Calendars in Confluence

If you have custom date fields for your Jira Projects – ‘QA Due Date’, ‘Scheduled Deployment Date’, etc – you can now map them on a Jira Calendar inside of Confluence.  It’s quick and easy to set up from wither the the ‘Create Jira Calendar’ and ‘Edit Jira Calendar’ dialogs.

The custom dates fields you select for any given particular Jira Project will show in month, week, and list views. When you combine your Jira and People Calendars you’ve got a solution that gives your team a better understanding of a project’s progress and the ability to identify potential resourcing issues that may impact its delivery.

How can this feature help you?

If your team is using Jira for project tracking or change management, check out this post to learn how Team Calendars 1.6 can help your team deliver projects on time, all the time, and keep track of when changes were made to your internal systems.

Losing track of all these new features?

We don’t blame you! Here’s a quick review of what Atlassian’s been up to, in case you missed it.:

• Team Calendars 1.1: Watch calendars, better management of repeated events, and user hover profiles
• Team Calendars 1.2: Autowatch calendars, improved notifications, and locale-based formatting
• Team Calendars 1.3: View restrictions
• Team Calendars 1.4: Edit restrictions
• Team Calendars 1.5: New user adoption dialog and smarter calendars sharing

Enjoy and keep your eyes open for a little present from Atlassian’s Team Calendars Development Team just before Christmas.

Bamboo 3.2 Now Available

Automate your complete release process down to one-click, add manual Stages to your deployment process, and re-run failed Stages with the newest version of Atlassian’s continuous integration server, Bamboo 3.2.

What’s New in Bamboo 3.2

1. Release Management
The dream scenario with any release process is to automate all of your release activities down to the click of a single button. Bamboo 3.2 and the new Release Management plugin for the Jira bug tracker aims to do just that – one-click release management.

• Prevent mistakes from being made as part of a long, manual release process
• Remove the barrier to release
• Speed up the release – the more often you do it, the faster you will make it
• Manage all your releases from a centralized and controlled location
• Use the same streamlined, automated process every time you release

Release in Jira, build in Bamboo! Create a release pipeline in Bamboo to automate your release process: use Stages, Jobs and Tasks to build, run tests, generate release artifacts, publish and deploy your release. Then initiate your release activity or event with one-click directly from Jira when you’re ready.

Run a release build in Bamboo from the Jira Versions tab without leaving Jira. 

When releasing a version in Jira you will have the option to run Bamboo builds.

If the build is successful the version will be released in Jira.

Automate the steps that traditionally are performed to release an application:

• Building and testing
• Tag the releases, assign a version
• Create and populate the release branch
• Deploy the release to a a deployment server or production environment
• Release the new version in Jira, move the unresolved issues to the next release
• Release or activate the new version in Production

Bamboo ships with a number of Tasks to build and deploy including Tasks to tag or branch a repository.

For Jira-Bamboo users the latest release of the Bamboo-Jira plugin is now compatible with Jira 4.3 and provides this release management functionality.

2. Manual Stages
Manual Stages allow you to interrupt/halt/suspend automatic build execution at a specific Stage in the build plan. For Plan execution to continue a user must manually trigger the Stage.

• The default behavior of any Build Plan in Bamboo is to go to the next Stage upon successful completion of the current stage. Depending on your needs you may need to introduce a manual checkpoint into your build plan before going on to the next Stage:
• Use a manual stage for deployment to give your QA team a chance to perform a few manual tests before your software goes into production
• In a release pipeline, you may want to separate your ‘publish’ step from your ‘install’ step and install only after backups or clean shutdowns have been confirmed
• Introduce a ‘quality’ gate, between build and deploy stages, to allow members of your team to approve and promote a particular build
• Any other step that’s difficult to automate or that requires special attention

3. Re-run Failed Stages
It’s not always the code that is broken. Infrastructure problems and other issues can cause a Job, and therefore the Plan, to fail. In these scenarios Bamboo can re-run failed Jobs without having to re-run the entire Plan once you’ve resolved the problems. This can save heaps of time and build resources.

4. Filter Bamboo Dashboard by Labels
Bamboo now allows you to label your build Plans. The Bamboo Dashboard can be filtered to only show plans with labels that you are interested in. Filter out the noise on your Bamboo Dashboard.

Hint: When viewing a Plan use the keyboard shortcut “l” to bring up the label dialog for the Plan. When viewing the Bamboo Dashboard press “l” to filter the dashboard by label.

And More…

• Improved Jira integration – delegate user management to Jira, easier application linking
• EC2 improvements

This release has over 50 new features and improvements implemented. Check out the full release notes for more details.

Also make sure to check out the new agile testing tool for Jira, Atlassian Bonfire.

Ready to download?

Download Bamboo 3.2 now to get started with a 30-day FREE trial or upgrade your current instance.

The latest release of the Atlassian’s Confluence SharePoint Connector is loaded with new features that turn SharePoint into the social collaboration platform you always wished it was. Best of all, it’s available for download today…here’s the scoop:

Unlock Documents and Lists stored in SharePoint
With Atlassian’s redesigned SharePoint list macro, anyone can insert their favorite SharePoint lists into Confluence without needing to know wiki markup.

1. Smarter SharePoint List Macro
New ‘Smart Fields’ for the ‘SharePoint List Macro’ in the Confluence ‘Macro Browser’ make light work of finding your ‘Lists’ from SharePoint and embedding them into a Confluence page for others to see.

2. Custom SharePoint List Views in Confluence
We’ve also made it easy for users to reuse the custom list views they’ve configured in SharePoint. Getting your personalized SharePoint experience in Confluence is now just a couple of keystrokes away.

Bring Social Collaboration into SharePoint
Experience the collaborative advantages of Confluence inside SharePoint like never before with new social features for SharePoint users.
1. Bring Confluence Blogs into SharePoint
A new Blog Post Web Part lets you bring the rich discussions and newsworthy content shared in Confluence, into SharePoint. And, with the power of Web Part Connections, you can connect a Blog Post Web Part to the new Blog Post Tree View Web Part. This lets SharePoint users browse all the blog posts in a Confluence Space directly from SharePoint. Now everyone can stay-up-to-date on the important announcements published in your intranet.

2. Post comments on Confluence content from SharePoint
Users can now make comments on the Confluence pages and blog posts they consume in SharePoint allowing more people to contribute to the conversations taking place inside your Confluence wiki.

For Administrators…
One-step Farm-wide Settings
We’re always striving to make the life of administrators easier. In this release we’ve added a huge time-saving feature – connecting your entire SharePoint farm to Confluence is now single-step process. Now when you add more SharePoint sites to your Farm, they’ll be automatically connected to your Confluence wiki.

Available Today!
There are even more improvements in the SharePoint Connector 1.4. Go get it, try it out, and let us know what you think. Check out the release notes here, or go ahead and download!

In order to remain competitive, a firm’s IT environment must be aligned with the firm’s business strategy – meaning IT should share responsibility in delivering value to the customer.

This is why Change Management is so important: changes to the IT environment must not disrupt the value delivered to the customer. IT must maintain stability even during change. ITIL’s Change Management methodology provides a clear framework (with defined roles, responsibilities, and processes) that can facilitate success.

Change Management should be considered a major undertaking. Determining where your firm stands in terms of ITIL maturity and developing a realistic project plan will improve your ITIL effectiveness.

Here are 5 Change Management tips to consider:

1. What’s a change, exactly?
Reality check: changes happen all the time. Nearly everything in IT involves some sort of frequent change. That being said, it’s important to figure out just what you consider to be a change. You can then determine when to apply ITIL Change Management principles.

Every change (even small installations and deletions) should be handled in terms of Change Management. The smallest of changes could cause major disruptions if no one knows about them.

2. What, specifically, will Change Management accomplish for my organization?
It’s no surprise that some firms have trouble defining ITIL in general. Since ITIL methodology isn’t something you can learn on a coffee break, most IT and non-IT folks alike don’t have the time to study ITIL for days.

Even if someone understands ITIL, they may not understand how it applies to efficiency. Someone might think implementing Change Management will fix issues related to Release or Incident Management. Pinpointing what Change Management will accomplish for your organization is therefore vital to understanding what it’s actually doing – managing the oversight and approval aspects of the change process in a unique organization-specific environment.

3. Articulate the benefits of Change Management to each level of the organization.
This goes right along with our last tip. Once you pinpoint the applicative benefits Change Management will have for your organization, advertise them. Getting buy-in at every level of the organization is critical to the success of your ITIL implementation.

There are multiple stakeholder groups within every organization – that is, folks personally and organizationally affected by the change. They’ll want to know “what’s in it for me?” in order to judge whether they’re on board with the change. Presenting accurate change information tailored for each stakeholder fosters better accountability from stakeholder groups – and improves buy-in.

4. Don’t Buy a Tool Until You’ve Determined What You Need.
While it may make sense to buy software to guide your Change Management implementation, doing so before laying out your process framework is counter-productive.

A more productive approach includes determining your needs before adopting a tool, so you can better evaluate which tools fit your needs instead of adjusting your needs to your tool.

5. Use Change Management Success to Promote Other ITIL Initiatives.
Folks are usually familiar with the Change Management component of ITIL – and oblivious of its other processes. If you track your Change Management successes and gather supportive data from Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), you can use success stories to promote the benefits of other ITIL processes like Release Management, Incident Management, etc.

One final tip: It’s worth noting the incredible value and need for leadership/executive support in the Change Management process. It’s important for company leadership to sell and support the change despite resistance in the company to organizational and cultural change. Often times, Change Management implementations are resisted since they uncover underlying issues that some within the company don’t want to uncover. Ultimately, though, Change Management helps make everyone proactive and out of the reactive, fire-fighting mode.

Thirsty for more? Contact us here.

Image courtesy of Patrick Lane Photography.

ITIL’s Release Management process bears a striking resemblance to ITIL Change Management—in fact, one could fairly consider Release Management to be a directly supportive process to Change Management. Release Management focuses on the practical need for organized coordination in the change process. It’s meant to ensure that changes are implemented in accordance to business needs and concurrent IT Service Management processes.

Release Management more specifically applies to changes to a “live” environment—that is, a working software or hardware environment (a word processor, email interface, software application, etc) that’s active, being used internally or externally. Release management protects these live environments by regulating the release of new configuration items; it uses the ITIL framework to control and monitor the flow of upgrades into live environments, where each upgrade is considered a “release.”

To more clearly illustrate this concept, consider these three levels of releases to a live environment—using the fictional email service “Mockingbird Version 1.0″ as an example:

• Major Releases introduce completely new functions to a service, drastically improving the service’s capabilities. Major Releases advance the version number by a full numerical increment—for example, Mockingbird Version 1.0 advances to Mockingbird Version 2.0.
• Minor Releases introduce fixes for known problems into the baseline technology of a service. Such changes would reflect themselves numerically by advancing the version number of a service by the first decimal place—for example, Mockingbird Version 2.0 advances to Mockingbird Version 2.1.
• Emergency Releases introduce quick (and at least temporary) fixes to repair unexpected problems that interrupt critical services. These changes advance a version number by the second decimal place—for example, Mockingbird Version 2.1 advances to Mockingbird Version 2.1.1.

It’s best to consider each release as a separately-deployed part of the service, the progression of which should look like this:

• Planning
• Building
• Testing
• Deploying

ITIL clearly describes two “levels” of Release Management in its book:

• Service Design (higher level)
• Release and Deployment Management (lower level)

The Service Design level should handle the framing and building of the release solution, while ITIL suggests the release project stages listed above should be handled by the lower level and should involve a project team, scope, design, and plan of its own. The Release and Deployment Management level literally drives the solution’s release, but only because of the sound development and planning by the higher level—meaning it is almost impossible to achieve lower level success without a solid understanding of the higher level.

We hope this blog provides you with a basic overview of Release Management. It’s sometimes difficult to explain ITIL concepts without using laymen’s terms– from our experience consulting companies on their use of ITIL, a basic overview is an essential foundation for understanding the application of ITIL principles into your business.

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