We sometimes get asked for advice on the best way for teams to adopt Gearset and build it into their release process. The process will be different for every company, but there are some common processes and timelines that many of our users follow. These broadly break down into four phases:
Requirements gathering
Evaluation
Implementation
Optimization
Requirements gathering
Before you begin using Gearset — or any other release management tool — the first step in your journey to modern DevOps is to perform an internal analysis of your needs and goals for release management. This will help you focus on the most important aspects of the tool during your evaluation.
Ask yourself questions such as:
What does the ideal process look like for our team? Are you looking for a brand new end-to-end automation and continuous integration process, or simply looking for a way to streamline your current in-org development by replacing change sets? Having a vision of the end goal will help avoid feature creep and keep a definite end goal in sight. Our whitepapers on release management and git-based development can often be helpful resources for prompting these kinds of discussions. You can view them here.
Who are the key end-users who will be involved in the process? It's important to get everyone in the team involved with the evaluation of any new tool. Including a mix of the users who will actually use the new tool — admins, developers, and release managers — is crucial to making the change stick by getting broad buy-in.
What are the main challenges with our current process? Finding the key pain points you'd like to fix will help you prioritize which features you spend your time on during the trial.
What is our timeframe for making the change? Are you looking for a quick fix in the next few weeks, or is this project part of a longer strategic evaluation across your company?
Who has control and sign-off over the project? Make sure someone is accountable for making crucial decisions and moving the project forward.
What is our budget? How many users are you planning to license? Will you aim for monthly or annual payments?
Evaluation
Before you sign up for a trial, it's worth doing a bit of background reading on the tool and its core functions so that you're familiar with how Gearset works. For example:
Now that you know what you're looking for, and have an overview of what Gearset can do, it's time to try Gearset out!
Sign up for a free 30-day trial here.
Start putting Gearset through its paces.
Invite everyone who'll be involved with the evaluation to create accounts and join the same team in the app.
If you'd like a slightly more tailored introduction to Gearset, contact our team, and we'll be happy to arrange a demo and answer any questions.
We'll reach out at a few points throughout your evaluation to help make sure you get the most from the trial. We also offer full technical support to all your users through our in-app chat.
Implementation
By the end of your evaluation, you'll have tested the core features of Gearset and demonstrated that it can help you solve your core pain points.
Through your own testing and chatting with our team, you should also have an idea of how Gearset fits into your journey to your ideal process. This will be a process of steps — don't expect to have everything set up and done within a month.
The next step is to decide how many users you'd like to license on Gearset. Our online pricing calculator lets you easily see the cost of adding users across our licensing plans. If you have any questions about purchasing licenses, contact our sales team at [email protected].
As Gearset is a hosted cloud app, there is nothing to install in your orgs as part of this final implementation process. The team can simply continue using the same accounts they used for the trial. These will be automatically upgraded to your payment plan.
Optimization
With any new process or tool, there will be a certain period of ramp-up before you fully optimize things. While Gearset has been designed to minimize that time, it will take a little while for things to bed in.
During the first few months of adopting Gearset, there are several things you can do to make things as smooth as possible:
Find a few users who will be your Gearset champions, and task them with training up new users and encouraging information sharing amongst the team.
Make sure the team members know where to go to get support — from our documentation to our in-app chat.
Read our blog and roadmap, and sign up for our monthly newsletter to keep up to date with the latest changes in Gearset.
Does Gearset offer professional services or on-site training?
Some other tools will force you to purchase expensive professional services training when you purchase their apps. We think this demonstrates the wrong approach to product design and customer support.
We have designed Gearset to be quick to learn and easy to master. In combination with our online documentation and our free support, we think teams have everything they need to get going with Gearset.
As such, we don't offer professional services or on-site training for Gearset.
Want to discuss your needs in more detail?
Our DevOps experts would love to hear from you. To discuss how your company can adopt Gearset and make the most from a modern DevOps process, simply get in touch with us:
Through our in-app chat
By email at [email protected]
Call us on +1 (833) 441 7687 (our lines are open during UK office hours)