Strategies for Managing Releases

There are several ways in which updates can be made available. First of all, most of the time the purchasing of a product means access to free online updates, released by the company. There are automatic updates that function through the internet. These types of updates usually aim to improve the product, fix various deficiencies, or perform minor changes. When the company decides that it no longer wishes to support software and wishes to promote a newer version, it stops releasing updates (the life cycle of the new system having started sometime before).

There are three main ways of managing new version:

• Patches
  • These are used to fix vulnerabilities or fix existing bugs
• Upgrades
  • Contain new functionality, usually in the form of completely new versions of the program
• Updates
  • Offer minor improvements to a product by fixing bugs or introduction small functionality improvements
• Releases
  • These are final working versions of an application. Releases are used in the form of initial application releases after the development process or after major updates are ready.