The purpose of the Deployment Management process is to place releases and other desired changes into their target environments, and to activate them in order that the functionality and operational improvements they contain can create their intended value.

See the definition of deployment.

The other desired changes includes transferring the responsibility for any subset of an IT endeavor’s operations from ownership by one service provider to another, while maintaining service continuity. For certain such transfers, deployment involves managing the effective transfer of resources necessary to deliver the service. Resources include staff, technology infrastructure, and intellectual capital.

Read the Deployment Management Key Concepts.

Important links

• Deployment Management Tool Mentors

Outcomes

As a result of the successful implementation of the Deployment Management process:

• New capability is introduced on a timely basis, and with minimized risk, disruption and cost
• Transfers of service responsibility are effected on a timely basis, and with minimized risk, disruption and cost
• All parties involved in a deployment (for example, users of the capabilities being deployed, service providers performing the deployment) are appropriately prepared, trained and skilled to ensure successful deployment
• In the event of failures during deployment, contingency plans ensure the expected level of service quality is delivered
  

Scope

Deployment Management is primarily triggered by an instruction to roll out any approved combination of software, related hardware, documentation, and operating procedures to one or more defined targets (for example: systems, user groups) within constraints such as cost and time. An alternative trigger for the instantiation of Deployment Management relates to the transfer of the responsibility for one or more services between providers or across business or organizational boundaries. At the other end of the scale, the implementation work related to a change which impacts a single CI is also performed by this process.

The completion of each deployment is indicated when the stakeholders affirm that the expected outcomes of a deployment are achieved and a business-as-usual operational service state has been attained.

Includes

• Deployment planning and co-ordination with affected parties
• Identification of resources (hardware, software, processes and procedures, and staff) to be deployed, or to be transferred between service providers
• Creating capabilities and procedures to support deployment activities, and to verify the readiness of and account for resources impacted
• Creating a plan for continuity of service
• Execution of the deployment plan, including:
  • Electronic distribution of software and other soft-copy items
  • Invoking logistical movements for physical items
  • Installing technical resources
  • Activating the desired configuration
  • Testing the installation against defined criteria (as provided in the Release Package and Change)
  • Backout of installed items, when needed
  • Delivering training
  • Providing initial user assistance
• Assessment of readiness to begin service delivery, and for handover to business-as-usual
• Management of risks and issues related to the deployment activities.

Excludes

• Logistics and movement of physical assets (Asset Management)
• Preparation and commissioning of the supporting environment (Facilities Management)
• Accounting for capital transfers and deployment expenditures (Financial Management)
• Program and project management techniques (Program and Project Management)
• Achievement of business benefits from new functionality (IT Customer Transformation Management)
• Updates to the CMS (Configuration Management)
• Knowledge and skill transfer (Knowledge Management)

Key performance indicators

• Customer satisfaction with the timeliness and quality of release deployment
• The elapsed time and direct costs
  • In this process domain
  • In each process step and between steps
• Percent of releases
• • Deployed as planned and scheduled
  • Rescheduled or delayed
  • Backed out
• Percent of implementation tasks
  • That are automated
  • That fail
• Number of incidents caused by deployment of a release

Relation to other processes

• Release Management provides the releases to be deployed by Deployment Management.
• Change Management approves change requests and sends them to Release Management for deployment.
• Deployment Management sends information to Configuration Management about which configuration items have been deployed.
• If a failed deployment cannot be successfully backed-out, a change request may need to go to Change Management to deal with the issue. 
• Solutions deployed using Deployment Management are delivered as a service using Service Execution.

Further reading

See Deployment in the ITIL® documentation.

In addition, see the IBM® Service Management Web page.