perrelease

Perrelease is a term used in software development to describe a release management approach in which each software release is treated as an independent unit with its own defined scope, objectives, and release notes. The concept emphasizes per-release granularity and is commonly referenced in continuous delivery and agile environments. It contrasts with releasing a large bundle of changes in a single update by promoting smaller, more frequent updates tied to a specific release milestone.

Rationale and practice

Perrelease aims to improve predictability, testing coverage, and risk management by constraining the scope of each release. Clear, per-release goals help teams communicate changes to users and stakeholders, facilitate targeted testing, and simplify rollback if necessary. Documentation and versioning are aligned with the release, providing precise historical records of what was delivered in each iteration.

Process and techniques

Typical perrelease workflows involve explicit planning to define the scope of the upcoming release, focused development cycles, and criteria-based acceptance testing. Release notes are prepared for each iteration, detailing new features, improvements, and any deprecations. Deployment is sequenced to minimize disruption, and telemetry is used to monitor the impact of each release.

Variants and tooling

Feature toggles or flags are often used in perrelease environments to enable or disable features per environment or customer, enabling safer rollouts. Semantic or calendar-based versioning may accompany perrelease to convey the release’s place in the product’s history.

See also

Release management, Continuous delivery, Feature flag, Versioning

Note

Perrelease is a practice described in industry discussions and is not a formal standard; it is one of several approaches to managing software changes across releases.