Before officially launching medium-to-large amounts of new functionality into Production, you’ll want to perform a checklist.
This checklist is a list of things to be completed by you and your team. It details that all the preliminary steps have already been completed, as well as preparing the use for the upcoming change.
There are actually multiple categories of items to include in the checklist, such as
- Development (ensuring user stories are done)
- Testing (UAT testing is complete and no severity 1 or 2 bugs are open)
- Change Management (end-user documentation and training is complete)
- Deployment Plan (the deployment package is validated in Production and a rollback plan is ready)
- Post Go-Live Support (the support team is ready to provide hypercare)
Each time should have an owner, someone who is responsible for completing the action and reporting to the development team.
A few days before the go-live date, the core development team needs to make a decision. Do they proceed with deployment, or pause or even rollback the deployment.
The takeaway
A go/no-go checklist confirrms all necessary steps are completed before an important go-live. Referring to this list is an important step in securing the success of deployments.