Concept of release management concept-of-release-management
Large releases share a few common challenges: multiple teams are involved, schedules conflict, and dependencies are difficult to coordinate. Release management addresses these challenges by providing a structured way to roll out changes smoothly.
What release management means what-it-means
Release management covers the coordination of a release end to end — from the moment teams begin developing behind feature flags to the moment the feature is fully available to all users.
It allows teams to:
- Deploy independently to production, at their own pace, without revealing features to end users
- Go live only when all participating teams are ready
- Roll out the release gradually to a subset of users before full availability
How it works in Experience Rollouts how-it-works
Release management in Experience Rollouts builds on the concept of feature flagging. Each team deploys their code to production behind a feature flag. A release is then a collection of feature flags defined across multiple applications and teams.
When all teams are ready, the release can be activated in a single operation — or gradually rolled out — without any individual team needing to redeploy or coordinate deployment timing.
This approach provides:
- Independent deployment — Teams deploy on their own schedule without affecting other teams or end users.
- Coordinated activation — All flags in a release are activated together when the release goes live.
- Gradual rollout — The release can be opened progressively to increasing percentages of users.
For details on configuring releases in Experience Rollouts, see Release management.