Exploring Digital Product Release

  • Freigeben Version: Australia
  • Aktualisiert 12. März 2026
  • 6 Minuten Lesedauer

    • The ServiceNow® Digital Product Release application enables you to streamline the process of delivering digital products and services by managing the process from planning to delivery.

    Digital Product Release overview

    Digital Product Release (DPR) is a release management solution that helps release managers, product managers, and program managers manage the release process. They can track the progress of releases while ensuring that the releases adhere to the company's policies.

    This solution automates processes that enable collaboration between stakeholders, so everyone can track release status, from start to finish.

    DPR provides AI-driven capability to automate the creation of release notes for product and service releases. The release notes are automatically generated from canonical release artifacts—such as stories, problems, incidents, and change records. You can edit and publish the release notes, and then download them in PDF or share a link. For more information, see AI-powered release notes generation.

    Digital Product Release Workflow

    A digital product or service has a release life cycle that starts with planning, goes through development, and ends with delivery. There are many different phases to the release life cycle of a product or service, and each phase can have its own set of activities. The following infographic illustrates the life cycle of digital products and services.

    Abbildung : 1. Release life cycle for digital products and services
    Infographic showing the release life-cycle for digital products and services. For details, refer to the following description.
    1. Create a product or service and add features, product enhancements, and releasesversions.
    2. Plan the scope of a release by moving featuresproduct enhancements into releasesversions.
    3. Initiate a release and set its release readiness target date.
    4. Execute the release by tracking its progress and completing phases and tasks within each phase.
    5. Validate the release phase against mapped policies to ensure that the release adheres to organizational standards.
    6. Get the product or service ready by the specified target date to make it available for deployment.

    Personas

    Digital Product Release is aimed at the following personas:
    Release manager
    • Manages release calendars
    • Manages release templates
    • Establishes release processes, including policy gates
    Release coordinator or Program manager
    • Communicates dependencies across a release
    • Approves the scope of a release
    • Provides status updates to the release team
    Product manager
    • Releases new products, services, enhancements, and features
    • Communicates updates to the development status
    • Plans the scope of a release
    • Initiates a release
    • Generate release notes using AI or add manually
    Engineering lead
    • Ensures development of new products, services, enhancements, and features
    • Connects development scope to a release

    Digital Product Release benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Define release readiness targets for single or recurring release schedules. Release readiness target Release manager
    Define release templates that include phases, tasks, policies, and approval tasks. Release templates Release manager or Release template admin
    Create policies to automate the release process. Policy administration Release manager
    Manage products, services, features, product enhancements, versions, and initiate a release. Release planning Product manager
    Generate AI-powered release notes that streamline release documentation, reduces manual effort, and improves clarity for stakeholders. Generate AI-powered release notes for a release Product manager
    Plan and manage the release process from start to finish. Release execution Release manager

    Digital Product Release key terms

    Approval definition
    An approval definition is a set of rules that specify how tasks will be approved from a set of stakeholders for a release. For example, the QA team might approve code quality or the Security team might approve on the security aspects. An approval for a task can be requested from an individual user or a user group.
    Included products
    Included products help you organize and manage related digital products and services. By creating a product hierarchy using Included products, you can understand the relationships between different products and services and make informed decisions about product management.
    Release bundle
    A release bundle helps you to group multiple releases to track and manage them concurrently from a single place. They also help you to identify dependencies and potential conflicts, and make any necessary adjustments to ensure a smooth and coordinated release process.
    Release calendar
    A release calendar helps you manage and track release readiness targets, releases, and change requests. You can toggle between viewing release readiness targets, releases, or change requests on the calendar using the filters.. The release calendar also contains blackout, maintenance, and other user-defined schedules to avoid overlap of release targets on those dates.

    These options on the release calendar give you a comprehensive overview of all events or activities scheduled for each date, improving release planning and traceability.

    Release execution
    Release execution is a continuous process to track and monitor the progress of a release. It helps you ensure that all products in the release are ready by the release readiness target date.
    Release readiness target
    A release readiness target is when a release is ready to be released. It helps release managers to determine the dates at which the products and services should be ready for deployment by the team.
    Hinweis:
    Release readiness target and Release target are used interchangeably in the documentation and application. Both terms refer to the same concept - release readiness target date.
    Release template
    A release template is like a blueprint for a release process, which includes a predefined set of phases, tasks, policies, and approval tasks.
    Release teams can use these release templates to create a release. All phases, tasks, approvals, and phase gates from the template will be automatically applied to the newly created release. It helps the release teams avoid redundant activities and focus on tracking and performing all the necessary tasks to complete the release on schedule.
    Stage-oriented release
    A release that follows a stage-oriented process. This process doesn't have phases with predefined end dates. It’s suitable for teams that work toward completing featuresproduct enhancements and objectives. Teams can move to the next phase after they have completed tasks and met policy compliance for the current phase. Teams have the flexibility to restart any completed phase if they encounter an issue that requires them to go back.
    Timeline-oriented release
    A release that follows a timeline-oriented process. This process has defined end dates for each phase of the release. It’s suitable for teams that work toward the planned deadlines and have phases with a specific duration.
    ReleaseVersion planning
    ReleaseVersion planning is an activity to plan a product or service's featuresenhancements into releasesversions to define the scope of work for each releaseversion.

    You can create a release after version planning is complete. The release must be associated with a release readiness target date, which determines the start and end dates for phases and tasks based on the target date.