If you’re a developer, you will have heard a lot of CI/CD terminology thrown around, and, frankly, it does deserve the attention. In simple terms, CI stands for Continuous Integration, and CD stands for Continuous Deployment. The term refers to testing changes in code and moving these changes to the production environment (Developer → Build → Test → Approve → Deploy). Instead of manually moving from stages, everything moves automatically and safely through defined steps.
ReleaseOps is a solution provided by ServiceNow to implement a CI/CD pipeline within your own ServiceNow instance. It provides a structured and automated way to move your update sets from Dev to Test to Production with validation and governance. Released with Zurich, all ServiceNow instances that are in Zurich+ are supported with ReleaseOps. Here are the core concepts of ReleaseOps and some best practices to get you started.
What Does the ReleaseOps Plugin Provide?
ReleaseOps provides a CI/CD solution within ServiceNow, which comes with the following functionalities:
- Pipeline-based deployments.
- Automated update set movement.
- Testing (ATF integration).
- Approval workflows.
- Deployment tracking.
Why Do We Need ReleaseOps?
Today, we manually move update sets from one ServiceNow instance to another using “Update Sources”, or uploading update sets in XML format. This is how the process looks right now:
Developer creates Update Set → Export → Import → Preview → Fix → Repeat.
This is time-consuming and always requires someone to be present to do these manual tasks. This is highly error-prone, and there are no standards defined (we know how developers fix everything in production directly).
Let’s be realistic – it cannot work like this forever. We need an automated way to put some guardrails up. This is where ReleaseOps comes in to save us from all manual and insecure methods. It provides a structured and controlled way to move changes across environments, ensuring validations, approvals, and governance checks are applied at every stage.
How ReleaseOps Works (High Level)
When you activate ReleaseOps plugins in all your ServiceNow instances and set them up using Guided Tour (yes, we have a guided tour as well), you should be able to automate the deployment of your update sets.
The developer groups their update sets into batches and creates a Deployment Request, which is also linked to an upcoming Release record. This action triggers the pipeline to deploy the update sets to the production environment.
Within the Deployment Request (DR), you can specify which Automated Test Framework (ATF) tests or instance scans should run (both of which are optional).
Core Concepts of ReleaseOps
1. Pipeline
A pipeline is simply a structured path that your changes follow before reaching production, ensuring they move through each environment, such as Dev, Test, and Prod, in the correct order with proper checks along the way.
Instead of directly pushing changes to production, the pipeline makes sure they are validated, tested, and approved at every stage, much like a package going through packing, quality checks, and approval before delivery.
Within this pipeline, Playbooks (a feature in ServiceNow) handle what actually happens at each step. They define and execute actions like moving update sets, running tests, triggering approvals, and handling failures, effectively bringing the pipeline to life.
2. Deployment Request
Deployment requests are created by developers to move their update sets to the production environment using ReleaseOps. This is basically a record producer form, which the developer fills with details like Update set name, ATF tests to run, Release number, Instance scans to run.
When a developer is raising a deployment request, it means the update sets are ready to be deployed in the production environment.
3. Playbooks
Playbooks are simple step-by-step instructions that tell the system what to do and in which order. In other words, it is like a checklist that defines actions to perform at each stage of the pipeline.
For example, a playbook can move an update set from one instance to another or run the ATF tests to check if everything is working as expected.
Where Does ReleaseOps Fit in SDLC?
ReleaseOps plays a very specific role in the overall Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and it’s important to understand that it’s not meant to cover everything.
It primarily strengthens the later stages of the lifecycle, especially once development is done and you’re ready to move changes forward.
It focuses on:
- Testing: Making sure your changes are validated (through ATF, previews, etc.) before they move ahead.
- Deployment: Handling the movement of update sets across environments in a controlled way.
- Governance: Introducing approvals, traceability, and standard processes so deployments are not ad hoc.
In other words, ReleaseOps takes over after development is complete and ensures that whatever is built reaches production in a safe and consistent manner.
What Does it Not Replace?
At the same time, ReleaseOps doesn’t try to solve everything in SDLC, and that’s by design.
- Planning still happens outside, typically in tools like Jira or within your Agile process.
- Development is still done by developers creating update sets, writing scripts, building flows, etc.
- Version control (like Git-based workflows, branching, and code reviews) is not handled by ReleaseOps.
ReleaseOps is not where you build things – it’s where you validate, control, and release them.
It sits between development and production, acting as a gatekeeper that ensures only tested and approved changes move forward.
When Is ReleaseOps Essential?
ReleaseOps starts making real sense when your ServiceNow development is no longer “small and manageable” and begins to need structure, consistency, and control.
1. For Smoother, Hands-Off Deployments
If your team is still manually promoting update sets and coordinating deployments over calls or messages, you’ll quickly feel the friction.
ReleaseOps helps you:
- Remove repetitive manual steps.
- Ensure every deployment follows the same path.
- Reduce dependency on individuals.
2. You Have Multiple Environments
The moment you have setups like Dev → SIT → UAT → Stage → Prod, things get complicated:
- Dependencies can be missed.
- Versions can get out of sync.
- Tracking what went where becomes difficult.
ReleaseOps brings order to this complexity, ensuring changes flow through environments in the correct sequence without confusion.
3. You Need Governance and Approvals
In many enterprise setups, deployments aren’t just technical – they’re controlled processes.
You may need CAB approvals, change management validation, and Audit trails. ReleaseOps allows you to embed these directly into the pipeline so that nothing reaches production without approval and every deployment is traceable.
4. To Reduce Risk and Human Error
Manual deployments often lead to missing update sets, skipping testing steps, and deploying incomplete changes. ReleaseOps introduces validation steps, testing checkpoints, and controlled progression.
To be honest, it doesn’t eliminate mistakes completely, but it reduces the chances significantly.
When Should You Skip ReleaseOps?
Ideally, ReleaseOps should be part of your ServiceNow strategy, but personally, I believe there are a few scenarios where you can skip ReleaseOps so that it doesn’t become a bottleneck.
Here are a few situations when you might not need ReleaseOps just yet:
- When you have fewer than three ServiceNow environments. It does not make sense to go with ReleaseOps because it works best when you have at least three environments.
- Your development team is very small, and there are very few chances of anyone overriding each other’s changes.
ReleaseOps Best Practices
Since I am implementing ReleaseOps in our environment to help developers streamline their development process and make our lives easier as platform admins, here are a few learnings from my side:
1. Integrate Change Management With Your Pipeline
It is essential to integrate your ReleaseOps with change management, as it will keep track of all your changes and deployments you have done in the past.
2. Introduce Approvals in the Pipeline
Out of the box (OOB) pipelines don’t have approvals configured in the pipelines, so personally, I think we should introduce a few approvals where they are necessary, like Testing team approvals and QA teams’ approval in respective environments. This ensures that everything was tested properly, which brings me to the next point.
3. Don’t Customize OOB Pipelines
Right now, we have two OOB pipelines available. We should not modify these pipelines – rather, we should make a copy of these and customize according to our needs.
As an example: you can include approvals, update set scans, and so on.
4. Batch Update Sets
We should not deploy multiple update sets that are for the same requirements. Rather, we should batch the update sets and then raise a deployment request for the movement of the batch update set.
This will make things easier for the developers, change team, release team, and platform team to keep track of the update sets.
5. Deployment Tasks
We know ServiceNow is not a big fan of rollbacks, so we should not rely on that and stick to the “Fix Forward” strategy. So, when you find an issue in an update set script or any object, you should create another update set to fix the issue rather than fixing on the target environment.
Now, to track all of this, ReleaseOps provides Deployment Tasks to us, which is a table inherited from our favorite Task table. So, under DR, we can create these deployment tasks to track any issues or bugs and assign them to the responsible team.
6. Don’t Overcomplicate the Pipeline Initially
When you are deploying the MVP of ReleaseOps, ensure it is not very complex and difficult for developers to understand. If it is complicated, developers will treat it like an overhead, but ReleaseOps is supposed to be their best friend during deployments.
So, we should plan our ReleaseOps process according to our organization’s policies and using the KISS (Keep It Super Simple) principle.
7. Release Plan for ReleaseOps
When introducing a new feature or product, it’s important to recognize that users are often accustomed to existing processes and may be hesitant to adopt change. A sudden or overly complex rollout can feel disruptive. Instead, the transition should be gradual and easy to adapt to.
For example, in one organization I’m familiar with, they are planning to introduce ReleaseOps to a small set of teams first. This allows them to gather real feedback, identify any gaps or challenges, and refine the approach. Once the process becomes more stable and mature, they intend to expand it to all teams.
Final Thoughts
If you’re still manually moving update sets and just hoping nothing breaks, it might be a good time to pause and rethink the way deployments are being handled. That approach might work for smaller setups, but it doesn’t really scale, and sooner or later, it starts causing issues.
ReleaseOps doesn’t magically fix everything overnight, and it shouldn’t be seen as a silver bullet, but it definitely moves you in the right direction by bringing some structure, visibility, and control into the process.
At the same time, it’s worth acknowledging that ReleaseOps is still a relatively new offering from ServiceNow. Like any new product, it does come with its own limitations, and you might run into a few gaps or rough edges while implementing it. But the direction is clear that this is where the platform is heading, and it will continue to improve and mature over time.
One more thing to keep in mind is that, as of now, ReleaseOps is available at no additional cost to customers, which makes it a great opportunity to start exploring and building your pipeline early. The only catch is that it’s not currently available on PDIs, so testing it requires access to proper instances.
Overall, it’s not about getting everything perfect from day one. It’s about taking the first step towards a more reliable and controlled deployment process, and ReleaseOps gives you a solid starting point for that.