Leave a Paper Trail

Each release train should have a designated conductor, one who keeps track of the progress in the system.

The conductor's responsibility is to keep track and make notes as the progress is made. She should be noting down any discrepancies, creating incidents, noting problems in the workflow, and leading the retrospective. On top of that, this role should also involve in letting stakeholders know of important details and progress.

One major part of this is keeping a journal of the progress in a centralized place. This helps others be in the know of what's going on and take charge if needed. Releasing a crucial software without enough context around in the team because the person is absent from work is a recipe for disaster.

So, keep a log of each change coming into the product, errors happening in the system, any problems occurring in the workflow, common failures, annoyances, and a high-level timeline. The team will begin to rely on this artifact to learn and this will make the Release Engineering system improve over time. Make this artifact accessible to everyone in the organization. This will reduce the times they ask you, "When is it going to get released?".