Release Notes are an essential and important part of releasing software and its inevitable updates.
These notes are communicated to engineering teams, to parties outside of engineering, and to the end users of the software.
But the problem is that Release Notes “require a great deal of effort,” according to a statement from Railtown AI Technologies. Employees waste hours engaging in repetitive activities, pouring through recent tickets and cross-checking them against published release notes to craft an accurate narrative of product changes.
The downtown Vancouver tech firm adds that this process “has become even more time consuming as new software development methodologies like Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment are becoming the standard process in building and releasing software.”
“Release Notes are critical for software companies, as they provide a record of updates and enhancements to a product,” says Marwan Haddad. However, Railtown’s chief technology officer warns writing release notes “can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially for teams that manage multiple products.”
Wouldn’t it make more sense to offload this repetitive work, he wondered, “and have AI instantly draft your release notes instead?”
Railtown AI believes they have modernized the process, creating a “new and much more efficient way to generate a Release Note.” The company achieves this through its artificial intelligence engine, RailNotes, which analyzes completed tickets to create an executive summary in a clear, multi-language business description.
This gives everyone a “clear understanding and meaning behind every new software release, fix, or update,” the company says.
“The fundamental element of any healthy relationship is clear and regular communication,” Haddad wrote in a blog post. “You don’t want your users wondering whether [a] long-awaited feature has been released or if the bug they’ve experienced has gotten fixed.”
Founded in Burnaby in 2011, Railtown AI is “on a mission to improve developer velocity by making root cause analysis easier and faster all while helping developers being more productive,” and beyond that, “to help teams grow and developers become masters in their craft.”
The firm achieves this chiefly through leveraging AI tech.
“Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the software industry, offering new and innovative ways to automate various tasks and processes,” affirms Haddad.
We’re seeing that truth play out in the fintech sector, among other industries undergoing technological transformation in Canada.
And it is also where Railtown’s AI-powered Release Note generator comes into play.
“Railtown AI uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze changes made to the application and generate comprehensive and accurate Release Notes automatically,” explains the CTO. “By automating the process, these tools can save software teams significant time and effort, allowing them to focus on other critical tasks.”
Haddad believes the top benefits of using the AI-based generator are: higher accuracy, higher consistency, saved time, and customization options for on-point branding.
“Can you remember what your product or service looked like when it was first released?” he asks. “Keeping track of all the updates, tweaks, and bug fixes can be an effective way to illustrate how your product has developed over time—Think of release notes as a highlight reel showcasing your team’s hard work and how your product has changed throughout versions.”
From tedious, resource-intensive chore to effortless highlight reel—that’s the leap Railtown AI is looking to bridge with RailNotes.
Cory Brandolini, chief executive of the company, is excited about the release. He believes it is a first-of-its-kind application that maximizes the potential of what he considers a currently under-appreciated aspect of software updates.
“[RailNotes] furthers our goal of providing companies and developers with best-in-class AI tools to help them become more efficient and to continually drive their velocity,” stated Brandolini.
This latest app from the company “will provide a much better connection between software developers and their customers, as their customers will now have a much better understanding behind every new release or update to the application, video game, or software that they are using,” he added.
With RailNotes, users “end up both with more productive employees and happier customers who receive high-quality release notes on time,” agrees Haddad.
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