International Journal on Science and Technology

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Bridging Change and Release Management: Ensuring Seamless Software Delivery with Reduced Downtime and Enhanced Stakeholder Confidence

Author(s) Abhishek Sharma
Country United States
Abstract In the digital economy, businesses rely on always-on, always-connected software systems to maintain customer engagement, compliance with regulation, and operational agility. Yet, frequent updates, patching, and feature releases risk into organizations, downtime, regression bugs, and stakeholder trust if not properly governed. Two related-but-distinct practices – change and release – continue to be the foundation for IT’s ability to deliver services to the business. Change management evaluates, approves, and documents changes based on business impact and risk, and release management is the process of making an approved change available in non-production and then in production. This article posits that this gap needs to be bridged in order for software to be released continuously and with low risk.
The study of the release management lifecycle introduces initiation, planning, build, testing, user acceptance, deployment, and post-deployment review, and its corresponding change-management control. Classical approaches like waterfall release management are compared to agile and DevOps practices, highlighting the revolutionary impact that CI/CD pipelines have had. The two can complement each other by applying appropriate governance through them, from structured ITIL discipline to an agile, faster moving process and is why many posts discuss the relationship and difference between Change Management and Release Management; it is where change management interfaces release management’s core concepts. The injection of cubature of release and change, when integrated with other aspects of service transition elements, provide a framework of strict governance.
Methodologically, this research takes a mixed-method approach: (1) a systematic review of both academic and practitioner articles on ITIL frameworks, ISO/IEC 20000 standards, and IEEE service management best practices, and (2) case-based analyses of the operational practices of actual firms in banking, telecommunications, and SaaS industries. Results show that companies that unify change and release come out ahead with up to 40% less downtime, higher release predictability, fewer post-deployment incidents, and an even stronger level of confidence from stakeholders. Additionally, recommended practices like dark launches, automated regression testing, staging environments, and integrated roadmaps are viewed as key enablers of success.
This paper provides a single methodology to span change and release management, directly addressing issues such as governance models, automation approaches, and cultural match. It contends that successful integration depends as much on organizational transformation – encouraging cross-functional cooperation of development, operation, governance, and business functions – as on technical alignment (e.g., via CI/CD and DevOps). The study also highlights the role of new technologies, such as AI-based predictive analytics for change impact analysis, in defining the future of IT service delivery.
Keywords Change Management; Release Management; Software Delivery; DevOps; Agile; Waterfall; CI/CD; ITIL; Downtime Reduction; Governance; Stakeholder Confidence; ITSM; Continuous Integration; Continuous Deployment.
Field Engineering
Published In Volume 16, Issue 4, October-December 2025
Published On 2025-12-19
DOI https://doi.org/10.71097/IJSAT.v16.i4.9916
Short DOI https://doi.org/hbf82r
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