13 Best Release Management Courses For Upskilling In 2024
Successful release management ensures smooth deployments, minimizes downtime, and keeps development teams aligned. Whether you're working in Agile, DevOps, or IT service management, having a structured approach to planning, coordinating, and executing releases can make a huge difference. Having a solid plan makes all the difference between a smooth launch and a stressful scramble.
The list below features courses covering everything from Agile and DevOps release strategies to CI/CD automation and ITIL frameworks. Options range from quick self-paced tutorials to in-depth multi-week programs, with prices from free to a few hundred dollars for most courses—though some enterprise-level training costs more.
Below, you'll find a breakdown of the best release management courses, who they're for, and what they cover—so you can choose the right one for your skill level, industry, and career goals.
Best Release Management Courses Shortlist
Here's a shortlist of the best release management courses I think are worth your time in 2024:
- Agile Release Management (Pluralsight)
- Agile Release Management: Unlocking Value For Scrum & Kanban (Udemy)
- ITIL® 4 Practitioner: Release Management (Axelos)
- Software Design: From Requirements to Release (LinkedIn Learning)
- DevOps on AWS: Release and Deploy (Amazon Web Services)
- Release Management in TFS (Udemy)
- Planning and Releasing Software with Jira (LinkedIn Learning)
- Fundamentals of Change Management & Release Management (BMC Software)
- Continuous Delivery & DevOps (University of Virginia)
- Salesforce Change and Release Management (Udemy)
- Deployment (LearnKartS)
- Azure DevOps Course: Continuous Delivery & DevOps (Pluralsight)
- Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Tools (Pluralsight)
Find more details about each course below.
Overview of The Best Release Management Courses
1. Agile Release Management (Pluralsight)
This course provides a comprehensive guide to transitioning into Agile Release Management, including key aspects of configuration management and metrics tracking. Designed for Agile practitioners in leadership roles, it covers essential steps in managing an agile product life cycle, such as enterprise and release planning, role mapping, and stakeholder management.
- Who It’s For: Professionals involved in agile project management
- Topics Covered:
- Product life cycle using Agile Release Management
- Transition from non-agile environments
- Enterprise and release planning
- Role mapping and stakeholder management
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 1 hour 32 minutes
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $45 per month after 10-day trial
- Take The Course: Pluralsight
2. Agile Release Management: Unlocking Value For Scrum & Kanban (Udemy)
This training course allows participants to discover essential competencies for de-risking releases and delivering customer value effectively in Agile environments using Scrum and Kanban. It offers practical tools, techniques, and exercises for release management in various formats, targeting Agile teams.
- Who It’s For: Agile practitioners, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners
- Topics Covered:
- Mitigating risks and delivering value
- Setting up prerequisites for effective release management
- Troubleshooting common release issues
- Scaling Agile frameworks
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 2 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: Self-paced
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $25.83 per month (billed yearly) after 7-day trial or $84.99
- Take The Course: Udemy
3. ITIL® 4 Practitioner: Release Management (Axelos)
This hands-on course is designed for IT professionals seeking expertise in Release and Deployment Management. It provides best practices for releasing new and changed services while adhering to organizational policies, emphasizing both strategic and operational aspects to maximize value and reduce risks.
- Who It’s For: IT service managers
- Topics Covered:
- ITIL® 4 framework
- Release process management
- Service improvement
- Effective approaches to service releases
- Risk reduction and value maximization
- Assessing and developing Release Management capabilities using the ITIL Maturity Model
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Both
- Exam Required?: Yes
- Eligibility Requirements: ITIL® Foundation certification
- Take The Course: Axelos
4. Software Design: From Requirements to Release (LinkedIn Learning)
This instructor-led online course guides learners through the full life-cycle implementation of a software project, incorporating release management practices. It covers requirements development, modeling, design, coding, and testing, using a simulated small-scale web application project for a realistic view of software development.
- Who It’s For: Advanced-level software developers
- Topics Covered:
- Requirements gathering
- Design patterns
- Release strategies
- Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
- Requirements elicitation and validation
- Proof of concept modeling
- Best practices for beta deployment
- Refactoring
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 1 hour 54 minutes
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 1 hour 54 minutes
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free Trial
- $24.99 per month after 7-day free trial
- Take The Course: LinkedIn Learning
5. DevOps on AWS: Release and Deploy (Amazon Web Services)
This course is designed to help learners improve their deployment processes by using DevOps methodologies and AWS tools like AWS CodeDeploy, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and AWS CloudFormation. It includes practical exercises to help learners set up AWS CodeDeploy and automate software release processes.
- Who It’s For: DevOps engineers and AWS practitioners
- Topics Covered:
- Continuous delivery
- Release management
- Continuous Integration (CI),
- Continuous Deployment
- Automating deployments with AWS CodeDeploy
- Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with AWS CloudFormation
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 3 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: Self-paced
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $49 per month after free trial
- Take The Course: Coursera
6. Release Management in TFS (Udemy)
This course provides an in-depth understanding of Release Management using Team Foundation Server (TFS). It is aimed at software professionals looking to improve the quality and speed of software releases by utilizing TFS for continuous release and deployment across environments.
- Who It’s For: Developers, Testers, Architects, Configuration Analysts, and Release Managers
- Topics Covered:
- TFS release pipelines
- Version control
- Automated deployments
- Key concepts of release management
- Authoring release definitions
- Using configuration variables
- Configuring continuous release and approval workflows
- Releasing applications to IIS and Azur
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: Self-paced
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 3 hours
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price: $49.99
- Take The Course: Udemy
7. Planning and Releasing Software with Jira (LinkedIn Learning)
This course focuses on effectively planning, developing, and releasing software using Jira Software and integrating Atlassian tools like Confluence and Bitbucket. It provides practical insights into connecting these tools to streamline software development and reduce manual effort.
- Who It’s For: Jira users, intermediate-level software professionals, and project managers
- Topics Covered:
- Crafting requirements in Confluence
- Connecting Confluence to Jira projects
- Managing test cases and bugs in Jira
- Releasing code using Bitbucket
- Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) management
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free Trial
- $24.99 per month after 7-day free trial
- Take The Course: LinkedIn Learning
8. Fundamentals of Change Management & Release Management (BMC Software)
This course is designed for change managers working with BMC Remedyforce. It provides an introduction to the concepts and procedures of Change Management and Release Management, enabling participants to create and manage Change Requests and Releases.
- Who It’s For: BMC Remedyforce users, particularly change managers
- Topics Covered:
- Practical applications
- Change Management procedures
- Release Management procedures
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 2 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 2 hours
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Take The Course: BMC Software
9. Continuous Delivery & DevOps (University of Virginia)
This course offers an introduction to Continuous Delivery and DevOps principles. It focuses on diagnosing a team’s delivery pipeline, improving automation testing, and facilitating iterative progress using DevOps techniques. The course is part of the University of Virginia's curriculum and helps learners understand key skills necessary for implementing DevOps in real-world scenarios.
- Who It’s For: Beginners in software development and DevOps
- Topics Covered:
- Continuous Delivery pipeline diagnosis and improvement
- Automation testing across development stacks
- Key roles in DevOps and their contributions
- Facilitating team progress on delivery pipelines
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 8 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: Self-paced
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $49 per month after free trial
- Take The Course: Coursera
10. Salesforce Change and Release Management (Udemy)
This course provides comprehensive training on Salesforce Change and Release Management. It covers the key processes, tools, and strategies required to handle metadata changes and deployments in Salesforce. It is ideal for Salesforce developers and administrators who want to enhance their knowledge in managing Salesforce deployments effectively.
- Who It’s For: Salesforce developers and administrators with basic Salesforce knowledge
- Topics Covered:
- Benefits of change management
- Key processes in change management
- Developing a change management strategy
- Handling metadata effectively
- Using deployment tools (Change Sets, Force.com IDE, Snapshot)
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 2.5 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: Self-paced
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price: $69.99
- Take The Course: Udemy
11. Deployment (LearnKartS)
This course is part of the Salesforce Admin and App Builder Specialization, aimed at equipping Salesforce administrators and app builders with advanced skills in deployment planning and managing Salesforce environment changes.
- Who It’s For: Intermediate Salesforce administrators and app builders
- Topics Covered:
- Deployment planning principles and best practices
- Managing Salesforce environment changes (version control, release management)
- Leveraging Salesforce sandboxes for development, testing, and staging
- Using Change Sets to deploy configuration changes
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: 10 hours
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: Self-paced
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $49 per month after trial
- Take The Course: Coursera
12. Azure DevOps Course: Continuous Delivery & DevOps (Pluralsight)
This course provides an overview of Microsoft's Azure DevOps toolset, designed to support continuous delivery and DevOps practices. In less than two hours, it covers how to use Azure DevOps to help teams deliver software reliably, securely, and in compliance with best practices.
- Who It’s For: Beginners looking to implement continuous delivery and DevOps using Azure DevOps
- Topics Covered:
- Azure DevOps Boards for agile workflow support (work items, product backlogs, sprint backlogs)
- Azure DevOps Repos and Git repositories (including branch policies and pull requests)
- Azure DevOps Pipelines for software build and deployment automation
- Azure DevOps Artifacts for managing external packages (e.g., NPM, NuGet)
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: Self-paced
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 1 hour 41 minutes
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free Trial
- $29 per month after a 10-day free trial
- Take The Course: Pluralsight
13. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Tools (Pluralsight)
This learning path introduces various CI/CD tools essential for DevOps practices. It includes a set of five courses that focus on how to implement and manage these tools, offering a comprehensive overview for those new to CI/CD or seeking to deepen their knowledge.
- Who It’s For: DevOps engineers and software developers
- Topics Covered:
- Getting Started with Concourse CI
- JFrog Artifactory Fundamentals
- Spinnaker Fundamentals
- Getting Started with Octopus Deploy
- Getting Started with Pulumi
- Online, In-Person, or Both?: Online
- Exam Required?: No
- Duration: Self-paced
- How Many Hours Of Instruction: 11 hours
- Eligibility Requirements: None
- Price:
- Free trial
- $29 per month after a 10-day free trial
- Take The Course: Pluralsight
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