Salesforce DevOps is a beneficial but often misunderstood pursuit. There are a variety of options for tools, processes, and approaches to this widely used development methodology. Simply adopting the DevOps mindset isn’t enough to see remarkable and immediate positive results.
Automated release management bolsters your Salesforce DevOps efforts through intentional practices and powerful tools.
Release management is the process of guiding a singular version of an update or application through the development process to deployment. Branching is often utilized to allow multiple developers to work on a singular project without impacting the main source of truth. These branches will need to be combined prior to deployment while avoiding overwrites and other potential errors.
Utilizing automation in the DevOps pipeline is an essential method of improving the success of your processes. Combining these tools with release management tactics creates an atmosphere that allows your company to quickly and adequately address the changing needs of the market.
But what exact benefits can you expect to see after the implementation of an automated release management platform in Salesforce?
Here are 7 immediate benefits of automated release management:
1. Reduction in Errors
A simple misfire isn’t always so simple. In fact, coding errors have the tendency to snowball and become more complicated and expensive when they aren’t found until late in the process. Consistent testing of coding structures is the best way to ensure you won’t have costly mistakes to rectify down the line.
Automated release management consists of many safeguards to keep bugs and errors from going unnoticed until deployment.
Mistakes are going to happen. Multi-developer teams are particularly prone to these mistakes. Overwrites and conflicting structures are common when multiple environments are integrated into one. Continuous integration and static code analysis work to spot these errors as soon as possible.
2. Increased Release Velocity
Speed is important but not when it comes at the expense of quality. Manual processes are inherently error-prone and can take a long time when the scope is quite large. It becomes difficult to push new projects forward when your team members are occupied correcting mistakes and troubleshooting existing projects.
A Salesforce development pipeline optimized with automated release management tactics and tools won’t be bogged down by correcting past mistakes, allowing you to push updates through to deployment much faster.
Automating processes with DevOps tools will also contribute to shorter periods between planning a new update and releasing it. Large, labor-intensive quality checks and tests that would previously occupy a large amount of team member time can simply be automated and completed without failures.
3. Higher ROI
You want your updates and applications to function smoothly. A positive experience by the end user is an incredibly important metric to judge the success of your DevOps projects. However, as a business, this is not your only metric. A successful product that doesn’t contribute to your company in any way can’t be considered a success. There needs to be a measurable return on your investment.
Intentional practices and powerful automated tools decrease wasted team member time and contribute to higher overall returns for each project.
These inflated returns will be seen in every project moving forward after implementing automated release management. This means these returns will grow exponentially over time.
4. Standardized Release Strategy
The processes used in a Salesforce DevOps pipeline should evolve over time. Every project is going to have unique differences. The methods used should address these challenges. However, a reliable and proven rubric by which to base this approach on saves your team time in the planning stage.
Automated release management provides a set of tactics and tools that will be useful in every DevOps project, which can be improved over time.
Standardizing your release strategy allows your team members to become comfortable with the process and know what to expect. They are then able to focus on their tasks instead of the surrounding processes that will move the project forward.
5. Enhanced Data Security
Data security should be a constant concern. The frequency of cyberattacks are continually climbing, as is the cost of experiencing one. In fact, the average cost of a data breach in 2021 is $4.24 million. But bad actors aren’t the only threat to your system. Simple user errors or even outages caused by natural disasters can trigger a massive loss in data.
A reliable backup and recovery tool is an essential aspect of a complete automated release management strategy.
A contemporary backup of your Salesforce environment saves your team massive amounts of time in returning your system to operations.
High code quality also supports data security of the eventual release. Any mistakes that make it through deployment can create data security vulnerabilities.
6. Consistency
A successful Salesforce DevOps pipeline needs to be able to consistently produce quality products. This reliability solidifies your company as a leader in your industry and generates consumer trust. Manual processes vary depending on the task as well as the team member performing the work. Even team members that adhere to established best practices are going to vary in their ability to complete a task.
Automated release management supports consistent results because it offers the ability to accurately repeat methods and processes numerous times.
Consistency is difficult to achieve with a multi-developer team. However, pre-established quality assurance checkpoints will be able to bring everything together in a uniform fashion.
7. Audits and Reports Provide Useful Insights
Not all automated release management tools are aimed directly at improving your current project. You can also run audits and reports to analyze your efforts and find areas that could benefit from tweaks and improvements.
Learning from every Salesforce DevOps project will continue to enhance your development pipeline, optimizing and streamlining your processes.
Automated release management provides benefits as soon as the tools and processes are integrated into your Salesforce DevOps pipeline. However, these benefits will only continue to grow as they are refined and perfected over time.
