Who Needs a Release Manager? Key Reasons to Hire One

John, a CTO at an innovative startup, had one of those mornings. His car wouldn’t start. He tried everything—turned the key, gave it a minute, and tried again. Nothing. Then, smoke started billowing out of the engine. He had to call the garage.

The mechanic looked and found the problem: the engine had been blocked. The culprit? Engine oil that hadn’t been changed in ages.

I know, it sounds too far-fetched to be true. We all change our engine oil regularly. Otherwise, we’d end up with a huge repair bill, right?

Now, think about your software teams. You’ve got developers cranking out code, engineering managers steering the ship, QA testers ensuring everything works as it should, and product managers mapping out the vision.

But are your releases still delayed, inconsistent, or just not hitting the mark? Maybe your “engine” is getting blocked too.

That’s where the release manager comes in. Like engine oil, a release manager doesn’t write code, test it, or design features. Instead, they ensure all the moving parts work efficiently with minimal friction, so your teams can deliver on time and with quality.

Why, How, and When to Hire a Release Manager

Before we start, I have a fun activity for you. Answer yes or no to the following questions:

If you answered “Yes” to more than 3 questions, read on. 

Why Should You Hire a Release Manager?

As we said earlier, a release manager is the oil to your software delivery process. You’ve got talented developers, dedicated testers, and visionary product managers. If we do not have someone moving the traffic and coordinating the moving parts, we will run into a bottleneck now and then. A release manager ensures everything works accordingly. This leads to faster releases without as many headaches.

This role is more important today than ever before. Our software teams are distributed across different locations, time zones, and work styles. This setup has huge advantages, it allows engineers to work at their most efficient times and helps organizations tap into cost-effective global talent. But, it also creates a need for someone who can connect the dots and ensure all the team members stay aligned.

Without a release manager, miscommunication, missed deadlines, and overlapping priorities become inevitable. This is where the release manager’s ability to bring everyone together shines.

How Does a Release Manager Improve Efficiency and ROI?

Every delayed release, missed deadline, or bug that makes it to production costs time, money, and credibility. A release manager allows your teams to focus on their core work instead of constantly firefighting. With better planning, fewer disruptions, and predictable releases, you’re costing and delivering a better product faster. That’s a value every C-level leader can appreciate.

When Is the Right Time to Make This Investment?

If you’re still reading this article, it’s probably time to consider a release manager. Even if things are “okay” now, ask yourself this: Are your teams stretched thin? Are your product launches getting more complex? Are delays becoming more common? A release manager a proactive investment to scale your software delivery as your business grows. The sooner you bring one on board, the easier that growth will be.

The release manager brings it all together.

What Does The Release Manager Do?

If the job description needs to be a single line, a release manager is responsible for coordinating and managing software releases. They work closely with the engineering, product, operations, and stakeholders to ensure that delivery continues.

The tactical steps in doing so could be some of the following:

Don’t Hire, Do This First!

While the role of a release manager is important, it is not necessary to hire a release manager immediately. A release manager is essentially a role and can be split across multiple people.

In reality, the hiring of a release manager is a process, which could be divided into the following steps:

• Define the release strategy: The organization could bring the key stakeholders together and define a release strategy that currently fits well. Existing participants like the CTO, Engineering Manager, or solution architects could take up the lead in facilitating these discussions.
• Divide and conquer: The current teams can pick up responsibility for each of the tasks and do it on a rotation. A developer or tech lead could take responsibility for delivering the change, while the product owner could work with the stakeholders to prepare them for the change.
• Automate where possible: The tech platforms today allow automating a lot of the release tasks in software delivery. The engineering team can take up the responsibility of automating these tasks and maintaining them.

While you or your organization is setting the foundations of the release processes, a checklist will be very helpful to get you started. In this article, The Essential Release Checklist, you can read more about the basics of a release checklist and download a free template. 

When all of the above is done and you find the core team deviating more often than not from their core tasks, is when you know the organization is ready to hire a release manager.

OK! You Need to Hire a Release Manager. What Do You Look For?

A release manager overlaps with many roles. It could be hard to find a person who ticks all the boxes in the hard skills. However, the release manager doesn't need to have all the hard skills. On the contrary soft skills are in my opinion a non-negotiable.

• A release manager should have excellent communication skills. Like any role where coordination and alignment are primary responsibilities, communication skills are the driving force behind the ability of a person to execute the role. Some tools such as Release Dashboards might help with mastering communication. Check the Apwide free e-book for further assistance.

• An inquisitive mind. A release manager should be able to ask good questions and should be willing to learn more about the needs of the stakeholders. This skill helps dive deeper into the actual problems that need to be solved and hence drive focus.

• A technical nous. There is no escaping the fact that this is a highly technical role. A release manager at the outset doesn't need to be an expert in all things tech. The role requires the person to be able to grasp technology quickly. A background of being a developer, tester, or technical lead helps.

• A problem solver. A release manager should be a problem solver, as usually, they have to take calls that will not satisfy all parties all the time. This means a strong capability of understanding what is relevant information from what is available and understanding the key issues and pain points of the stakeholders.

Give the Release Manager His Tools! (aka Captain America) 

You have set up the release processes and you have the best release manager possible. Your release manager is now documenting all the releases, and environments on ….er….excel? That would be a criminal waste of time. Even Captain America needed his shield to be a better Captain America. Listen to T’challa and give your release manager his tools. I have listed some tools below which I have used as a release manager and have found them to make my life easier:

• Release Calendar: Having a shared release calendar is a non-negotiable. If you do not have a visual representation of the release plan, the chances of the team executing it on time go down drastically. While there are many ways to do it, a shared Outlook or Google Calendar can get you started. The Jira marketplace is filled with applications that do the same. I have used rm cloud extensively and I have found it great.
• Environment management tools: A release manager would be making many decisions as part of his work. It is imperative that he takes good decisions more often than not. To make better decisions, a release manager should understand the what and where of the scenarios. What are we deploying and where are we deploying? The environment details will answer the where of the context. Many testing and deployment issues are a result of the environment they are being tested or deployed. An environment management tool helps the release manager to make better decisions. Apwide Golive is probably the best tool in the Jira marketplace to manage your environments.
• Scope management: We talked about how the release manager should know the what and where of the situation. The scope answers the what of the situation. Jira has a pretty robust version management workflow and also comes with Jira Plans (aka Advanced Roadmaps). The releases should be tagged as early as possible and monitored. When Jira is integrated with version control tools like GitHub, you have leveled up your release manager. The release manager has now the ability to understand the impact of every issue/work item on the code.
• Incident Management: Most organizations have an Incident management tool and methods. These tools should be made accessible for the release manager to complete the feedback loop. The release manager would be able to see the links between the deployments, incidents, and issues. It will help the product teams to receive feedback quickly and of high quality.

Conclusion

There are many ways around hiring a release manager, there is no denying that a person looking at these tasks full-time will improve the overall organization's efficiency and keep the core team focus on the tasks they are responsible for.

When the right person is brought into the right environment, you will see the release manager will be able to drive up the frequency, and quality and ease up the process of releases for a tech organization manyfold.

And here are a few must-know items for you: