Release Manager

Job Title: Release Manager

Job Location: Madison, WI

Job Type: Contract

Job Overview:

• Release Managers are responsible for developing, managing and organizing releases.
• They collaborate and coordinate the implementation activities; focus on dependencies and relationship management; delivering products by bringing software and/or infrastructure as an integrated release package or solution.
• TRMs ensure integrity of pre-production and production environments.
• They create and own release processes; are central knowledge point of products environment. TRMs identify efficiencies in the release processes, propose automation solutions or improvements and implement them.
• They develop and manage release schedules by ensuring planned milestones are met in a timely manner.
• TRMs emphasize on customer experience, efficiencies, cross-functional dependencies, compatibility and implement the releases accordingly.

Requirement/Must Have:

• At least 7+ years software/SaaS experience with 5 in Release/project/program management.
• Strong knowledge of software development business processes and practices
• Experience with project management and software development tools.
• 2+ years of experience with Change Management and in using ServiceNow as service management tool.
• Experience in creating large scale implementation plans, managing and coordinating them with multiple system integrations and dependencies.
• Release and/or project management experience on a large IT program supporting government customers.

Responsibilities:

• Accountable for creating, managing and maintaining the specifics of Release Processes and Schedules.
• Collaborate with leadership and customers to understand their perspectives of balancing speed and risk.
• Identifies and analyzes risks, conflicts and impacts within and across multiple releases and work with project teams to mitigate issues.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to maintain high-quality deployment artifacts as they move through the entire release lifecycle.
• Maintaining release schedules for various type of release.
• Managing, Planning, and negotiating release activities.
• Responsible of all release activities within the implementation of a given project
• Prepare implementation plans, review with project teams and stakeholders including contact lists, communications, back outs, and production verifications.
• Gather application, component (infrastructure) data and dependencies required for releases.
• Execute production deployments and implementation plans during the production readiness phase.
• Communicate implementation plans, release statuses, issues and resolutions to stakeholders and leadership in a timely manner.
• Lead RCA and post implementation review meetings, gather and coordinate implementation issues resolutions and communications.
• Conduct Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews.
• Plan and give weekly updates on the release activities.
• Participate in CAB meetings to discuss release scope and/or roadblocks
• Maintain documentation related to procedures on build and release, various notifications lists, and dependencies.
• Make improvements in the methodologies used for configuration management and development of software that helps to find ways to use in configuration management
• Perform a release management assessment, identify process improvement opportunities and ensure implementation and adherence to the release management strategy
• Accountable for developing process improvements and training of release processes to stakeholders.
• Develop and present executive-level reports, presentations, and analyses of initiatives and programs, including roadmap and release execution.
• Responsible to handle the pre-prod deploy window and work closely with environment team for process improvements.

Skills:

• Ability to manage critical situations across teams to ensure the overall success of the release with the flexibility to accommodate evolving business needs.
• Proven organizational, presentation and communication skills, both written and verbal, with technical and non-technical staff and for all levels of management.