Outline the Deploy phase
You've successfully guided your organization through the Prepare phase of the servicing process, and now they're ready to move to pilot deployment. As the process manager, you're going to produce a high-level overview of the work that needs to be carried out so the update can be deployed.
Pilot deployment
For this phase of the servicing process, your team will carry out tasks to start pilot deployment. Pilot deployment is the process of deploying an update to a select number of devices in production before being deployed broadly.
Pilot deployment involves many different tasks. At a higher level, these tasks are:
- Assign pilot devices from the Prepare phase to receive the update
- Implement baseline updates
- Implement operations updates
- Validate the deployment process
- Deploy to devices
- Test and support devices
- Determine broad deployment readiness
You work with your team to assign tasks to the correct roles in the servicing process, and you oversee the tasks and outcomes.
Broad deployment
When pilot deployment has been completed, you can launch broad deployment of the update to devices across the wider production environment.
You'll decide on how to approach broad deployment, including how devices will receive the update along with the user experience.
Common tasks for broad deployment include:
- Create broad deployment ring
- Update bare metal process
- Assign devices
- Implement operations updates
- Validate deployment process
- Deploy feature update
- Support feature update
- Review deployment success
- Obtain recommendations for improvements
As with pilot deployment, you work with your team to assign tasks to the correct roles in the servicing process, and you oversee the tasks and outcomes.
Deployment considerations
You'll need to think about how to present the deployment of the update to users. For example, should the update be communicated to make users aware of it and any benefits provided? How will you cater for users who have a business need that requires them to defer the update for a short period?
It's also important for you to consider how the update is delivered to users. With the help of Configuration Manager, your administrators can make the update optional, and then enforce it later. By using Windows Update for Business, your administrators can set different deferrals. Windows Update for Business then determines when devices should update at a given time. Both tools provide options to configure the user experience when updates are applied, and are differentiated by the level of administrative effort to deploy the feature update. Windows Update for Business reduces administrative effort and relies on data driven insights to determine when a device is ready for deployment. Configuration Manager relies on an administrator to validate and deploy the update to devices.
You can create a communication strategy that informs users in a timely manner and motivates them to apply the update. For best results, the communication strategy for the update is tested with users in pilot deployment, and then used for broad deployment.