In 2014, 44% of Salesforce customers managed at least monthly releases into their Salesforce environment. In 2015, this number is set to increase by 20% according to the latest The State of Salesforce report. 

Maintaining a healthy release velocity will inspire excitement and boost adoption in your organization, de-risk your deployments, and give you cold, hard data points to prove success. Here are my top tips to help you get started:

1. Maintain a backlog to build user excitement
   
   Developing a healthy release velocity is pointless without improvements that make a difference. If you haven’t already, develop a way for users and your management team to provide feedback and new ideas for the system. Maintaining a healthy backlog of enhancements, fixes and desired new functionality is a great way to keep users engaged and excited,  and, in turn, improve adoption statistics.
2. Establish a release cadence — and make it visible
   
   It’s not uncommon to have two release cycles in place, one for your general enhancements and bug fixes, another for larger innovations on the system (see graph). 
   
   Prioritizing, scoping, and assigning these tasks into delivery sprints is a great way to ensure that your development team has a clear idea of what needs to be developed and what the timelines are for each release cycle. Sharing the release cycle with the users will also provide a level of ownership as they see their suggestions make it into the live environment. 
3. De-risk your deployments
   
   It’s all about value and speed: how do you make the most valuable changes for your users in the fastest possible way without forgoing quality? Using Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools can assist in the following ways:
   
   Build sprints automatically out of existing backlogs
   
   Measure the potential impact of changes
   
   Automatically queue test scripts
   
   Automatically test code changes
   
   Automatically package up components for deployment
   
   Prevent deployments that may cause errors and conflicts in a live environment
   
   Another great tool to use would be Smart Sandbox developed by Jason Siegel, Senior Consultant, which allows you to easily copy large, related data sets from your production environment to your sandboxes to ensure you’re getting the best possible environment to build and test in during the development phase.
4. Continually measure your success
   
   It’s easy enough to set all of these processes up and assume the changes are having a positive impact. You should always look for feedback from your users on the changes and the processes in place to facilitate the innovation. Check often and ask the following:
   
   Build sprints automatically out of existing backlogs Is the system easier to use today than 12 months ago?
   
   Do you know how to request changes and new ideas?
   
   Do you have visibility into what changes are in the next release and why?
   
   Are you receiving training on the changes that are released?
   
   Do you feel the innovation process is making Salesforce more valuable to the company?

The process will never be perfect, and, much like your system, requires constant evaluation and changes.

Don’t fall behind. Connect with our experts now to start your business transformation.