If you have been following the Future of Deployment blog for a while you will have worked out a common theme that runs through the posts – Deployments are just too difficult. We don’t do “too difficult” at Red Gate, we do Ingeniously Simple. That’s a tough goal to achieve in the early stages of a new product and we recognise that we have some way to go to achieve this with Deployment Manager.

So what is the secret of an Ingeniously Simple tool? We focus on the user. We focus (sometimes obsessively) on the problems they are trying to solve and how that will use that tool. We create prototypes and test them frequently with users. The teams at Red Gate do these User-Centered Design activities early in the development process too.

That’s why on the Future of Deployment the User Experience (UX) team will post early designs, so that we can get your feedback to ensure we work on the right features and that we create a product that works the way you work.

So far you have told us that you need user roles and permissions, as well as an easier way to create deployment packages. We’re working on that functionality now, taking the paper prototypes we shared last week and creating a fully functional database publisher that is now ready for testing (see below).

Simplify deployments with the SSMS Plug-in

We are committed to make Deployment Manager an awesome product, but for our User-Centered Design approach to be effective we need you to get involved. Do you have a little time (an hour or less) to test prototypes? Each participant of a completed test will be awarded a $50 Amazon voucher or equivalent.

Please add a comment if you would like to get involved in our application tests. In doing so you’ll get your say and make the pain of deployment a thing of the past.