How do we delete a release in TFS 2013 Release Management?

Question

We are using the Release Management, TFS 2013 (previously InRelease) and have a lot of releases that we would like to delete. The problem is that the "Delete" button is always greyed out. What are we missing here?

Answer 1

This is not possible with the current version (RM 2013 Update 4).

Only Releases in Draft state can be deleted.

Answer 2

The Process of deletion is little complex in the new Microsoft's Release Management 2013. You need to remove all the dependencies for a particular thing that you are using before deleting.

First You have to delete the Release, the condition for this is that Either the state of the release should be Released or in Cancelled state. This way you can delete the associated Template that is used for that release. You have to change the status of all the releases which are using that template to delete the particular template. After deleting the template which are using particular variables you will be able to delete those variables variables.