Large-scale software systems constantly change during system evolution for feature enhancement. Most of the features originate from diverse stakeholders that require their needs to be met despite resource and risk constraints. In such large systems, the number of features requested during the different releases of the system typically exceeds the available resources. Release planning involves decision making about what new features or changes to implement during which release of the software. Existing release planning techniques are not targeted at evolving systems; in this case, knowledge about existing software product is core to making meaningful release decisions.

In this paper, we describe ten key technical and nontechnical aspects impacting release planning. Based on these aspects, we evaluate seven existing release planning methods. We have also proposed a new release planning framework that considers the effect of existing system characteristics on release planning decisions. Initial realization of this framework focuses on historical defect data to characterize the health of system components. This proposed approach extends the existing solution method called EVOLVE by (i) the proactive analysis of the risk involved in integrating new features into existing components of the system and (ii) identifying the importance of estimating the integration effort for each feature based on system characteristics. An illustrative example is also presented.