Using Release Management v2

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using Release Management v2

    The Release Management v2 plugin in ServiceNow enables you to plan, track, and execute software releases efficiently. It provides structured release tables to manage release information and related tasks, supporting both product-specific and enterprise-wide releases. This tool integrates with the CMDB by linking products to Configuration Items (CIs), which helps connect release processes with incident, problem, and change management.

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    Key Features

    • Product Management: You can create Product records to group releases and work artifacts. Linking a product to a CI in the CMDB is optional but helps associate release activities with other IT processes.
    • Release Definition: Releases are planned per product and may include child releases or phases. Release managers define the release type (e.g., major, minor), schedule, and scope.
    • Release Phases: Releases can be divided into multiple phases to reflect governance and execution steps, such as requirement gathering, design, development, testing, and deployment. Each phase contains associated tasks that must be completed to progress.
    • Scope Management: Before execution, the scope of a release is defined by associating relevant work artifacts such as projects, epics, stories, enhancements, and defects. This allows precise tracking of what the release encompasses.
    • Release Hierarchy Visualization: The Release Hierarchy related list helps visualize the structure of releases, phases, and tasks, aiding in managing complex release workflows.
    • Enterprise Releases: Releases can be enterprise-wide, covering all products and services, without the need to define individual products.
    • Important Update: Starting with the New York release, scoping releases using SDLC or Scrum Agile Development 1.0 is no longer supported within Release Management v2.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers can leverage Release Management v2 to streamline release planning and execution across their organization. By organizing releases into products and phases, release managers gain clear visibility and control over release progress and scope. Linking products to CIs enhances traceability across ITSM processes. The ability to define detailed scopes ensures all relevant development and defect work is included in releases, improving coordination between development and release teams. The hierarchical views facilitate managing complex releases with multiple phases and tasks, supporting both waterfall and iterative release methodologies.

    The Release Management v2 plugin (com.snc.release_management_v2) provides release tables which store information about the planned release and tasks that are required to execute the release.

    Product

    Use a Product record in Release Management to store information about a product for reference purposes and groups all the releases and work artifacts for the product.

    You can use the Configuration Items reference field to link the product with a corresponding CI in the CMDB. Each CI keeps information about how it relates to other CIs, and can track any incidents, problems, or changes related to it. Specifying a CI for the Product connects information from the release process to other processes in the instance.

    Defining a product is not mandatory to manage the release process. A release can be an enterprise release in which it is associated with all products or services, or it can be associated to more than one product as well. In either of these cases, defining a product is not mandatory.

    Once releases are defined for a product, the Product Hierarchy related link displays the hierarchy of releases, release phases, and release tasks associated with the product.

    Release

    Once a product is defined, you can plan and execute a release. Start by defining a release for the product and add child releases or release phases for the release. Then, scope the release by defining work artifacts for the release.

    Release Phase

    Define multiple release phases for a release for release governance and smooth execution.

    For example, if the release is managed more like a waterfall process, the release phases could be requirement gathering, design, development, testing, build, acceptance, and deployment. For each phase, there can be release tasks associated to it. The phase gets completed as and when all tasks are completed for a phase. Release managers must keep the release phases updated.

    If the release is divided into multiple merges, the phases could be merge 1, merge 2, merge 3, and so on. The type and number of phases would depend upon the release management process of your organization.

    Scoping a release

    Before starting the release execution, you must define scope of the release. Scope of a release includes the work artifacts such as projects, epics, stories, enhancements, and defects that are a part of the release.

    For example, a minor release might only have a few problems and enhancements whereas a major release might have multiple projects or epics associated to it.

    Important:
    Starting with the New York release, scoping a release using SDLC or Scrum (Agile Development 1.0 (com.snc.sdlc.scrum.pp)) is not available.

    While scoping the release, you can use the Release Hierarchy related list on the Release Form to view the release as a hierarchy.