When To Write Release Notes

What do you think ? If the answer is when we are releasing the application to production environment, then continue reading as you have missed the train completely and put the horses at the back of carriage.

 Let's Break It Down

Remember the last time when your team was in a Sprint Demo or Show & Tell and a Business Owner asked "what was this feature about" and everyone in team is trying to jump in the conversation and provide different answers. This problem is faced by Scrum Teams as details are skipped moving closer to production.

In reality we all forget things as time goes on and we get busy with daily implementation.

 When To Write

Best time to write release notes is when the Scrum Team writes User Stories during the backlog grooming as you consider all the angles to deliver the product to production.

The Product Owner and Business Engineer should paint a clear picture in the description and define all the stakeholders who can be impacted and needs to be communicated.

Tips To Make Your Release Notes Visible:

1. Creative Excitement
2. Keep it Concise
3. Use Simple English - Instead of PhD type language

Always Consider The Below Perspectives:

1.  Business
2. Technical
3. Communication
4. Quality

 Business Perspective

Simplest way is to create story in Jira / VSTS named release notes which includes common blurb for the project and including new changes from a pure business perspective. 

For Business Users:

1. What Is Business Value For This Project
2. Current Release - Including Features, Screenshots, Descriptions
3. Video Recording - Demo

 I will sound like a broken record but "keep it simple - plain vanilla flavor English " and something that ties business value to current release.

Business and Customers love to hear how teams are working hard to deliver them value - so why not make it explicit.

 Technical Perspective

Support Team is always waiting for right information to be communicated pro-actively.

Product Owner is the caretaker of the application from the Sunrise / Inception of the project till the Retirement / Decommission, meaning delivering technical information to Support Team becomes as important as building the product.

As mentioned above it makes sense to include technical details in same story in Jira / VSTS for release notes as nobody has time and patience to look through thousands of emails and slack channels to find what was released.

This issue can be tackled by collaboration between Scrum Team and Support Team by inviting the Support Team for the initial agreement on information required to support the application. 

The output of the meeting will drive the technical requirements and level of details expected to be delivered. 

For Technical Users:

1. Know Issues
2. Bug Fixes
3. Enhancements
4. Version Control Details

Communication

Now that we have everything in the release notes from business and technical perspective at the beginning of the sprint. Scrum Team is ready to hand over this information any moment to all stakeholders and it becomes a single source of truth for the work to be done.

The right time to communicate is when the code locked down , security scans are completed, and user acceptance testing is signed off. 

Access to release notes is most important and everyone should be able to easily read, review and share across your company. 

For external clients some of above information can be refined and fine-tuned.

 Quality of Release Notes - Litmus Paper Test

Imagine going to BMW showroom and while waiting for test drive, what often you do ? Pick up the beautiful BMW magazine which describe all business and technical details about latest models released or upcoming models in the market.

This is it ! Your Litmus Paper Test ! If you can't make your users read your release notes with same excitement, keep improving .

By Agile and Scrum principles follow the empirical process but to put in plain words - I will say "do it in style".