Deployment Checklist

Deployment Checklist

Project: {{PROJECT_NAME}} Version: {{VERSION}} Date: {{DATE}} Author: {{AUTHOR}} Status: Draft | In Review | Approved Reviewers: {{REVIEWERS}}

Document History

Deployment Metadata

1. Pre-Deployment Checklist

Code Quality Gates

• Code reviewed and approved — all PRs in this release have ≥ {{REVIEW_COUNT}} approvals
• All unit tests passing — CI pipeline green on the release branch
• All integration tests passing — CI pipeline integration stage green
• Code coverage meets minimum — ≥ {{COV_GATE}}% (current: {{CURRENT_COV}}%)
• No HIGH/CRITICAL security findings — SAST and SCA scans clean
• No secrets detected — secret scanning clean
• Linting passes — no errors in CI lint stage

Staging Verification

• Staging deployment complete — this exact artifact has been deployed to staging
• E2E tests passing on staging — automated suite green ({{PASS_COUNT}}/{{TOTAL_COUNT}} tests)
• Manual QA sign-off obtained — QA team has reviewed new features
• Performance baseline not degraded — P95 within {{PERF_GATE}}% of baseline
• Visual regression checks passed (if UI changes)

Database & Migrations

• Database migrations reviewed — SQL reviewed by a second person
• Migrations tested on staging — ran successfully, duration recorded: {{MIGRATION_TIME}}min
• Down/rollback migration tested — migrate down executes without errors
• Migration script idempotent — safe to run twice without errors
• Estimated migration time on production documented: {{PROD_MIGRATION_TIME}}min
• Data backup taken (if destructive migration) — backup ID: {{BACKUP_ID}}

Environment & Configuration

• All environment variables documented and updated in {{SECRET_STORE}}
• New secrets provisioned in production secret store
• Configuration changes reviewed — no unintended changes from staging
• External API keys are live (not sandbox) credentials
• DNS records verified (if changes required)

Feature Flags

• Feature flags configured — new features default OFF in production
• Kill switches in place for all new significant features
• Rollout plan documented — which flags, in what order, over what timeline
• Feature flag audit complete — no stale flags from previous releases

Rollback Readiness

• Rollback plan documented — see Section 5 and rollback-plan.md
• Previous version artifact available — {{PREV_IMAGE}} in registry
• Rollback tested on staging (if DB migrations are included)
• Rollback owner assigned — {{ROLLBACK_OWNER}} is available during deployment

Operational Readiness

• On-call engineer notified — {{ONCALL}} is aware and available
• Deployment window confirmed — {{TIME}} - {{END_TIME}} (off-peak)
• Monitoring dashboards open and ready
• War room set up — {{WAR_ROOM_LINK}}
• Change request approved — CR-{{CR_NUMBER}} approved by {{APPROVER}} on {{DATE}}

2. During Deployment

3. Post-Deployment Checklist

Immediate Verification (First 15 Minutes)

• Health checks passing — all instances healthy per load balancer
• Smoke tests pass — automated smoke suite green
• Critical user journey manual test — manually verify {{CRITICAL_JOURNEY}}
• Error rate normal — < {{ERROR_THRESHOLD}}% (check {{DASHBOARD_LINK}})
• P99 latency normal — < {{P99_THRESHOLD}}ms
• Database connections normal — no connection pool saturation
• No unexpected errors in logs — {{LOG_DASHBOARD_LINK}} shows clean logs

Feature Validation (First 30 Minutes)

• New features functional — quick manual test of each feature in scope
• Feature flags enabled per rollout plan — {{FF_DASHBOARD}} shows correct state
• Third-party integrations working — payments, email, external APIs responding
• Version confirmed — GET /api/version or equivalent returns {{VERSION}}

Monitoring Setup (First 60 Minutes)

• Performance baseline compared — P95 matches or beats staging baseline
• CPU and memory normal — no upward trend
• Alerting verified — test alert confirms delivery to on-call
• Stakeholders notified — release announcement sent to {{NOTIFY_LIST}}
• Documentation updated — release notes published

4. Rollback Procedure (Quick Reference)

Rollback triggers (any one sufficient):

• Smoke tests fail after deployment
• Error rate > {{ROLLBACK_ERROR}}% for > {{ROLLBACK_DURATION}} consecutive minutes
• P99 > {{ROLLBACK_P99}}ms sustained
• Data integrity issue detected

Rollback authorization: {{ROLLBACK_AUTHORITY}} or senior engineer on duty

Rollback steps:

# 1. Announce in war room: "Initiating rollback to {{ROLLBACK_VERSION}}"
# 2. Trigger rollback:
{{ROLLBACK_CMD}}

# 3. If DB migration was included — run down migration:
{{DOWN_MIGRATION_CMD}}

# 4. Verify rollback:
curl {{URL}}/health
bash scripts/smoke-tests.sh {{ENV}}

Expected rollback time: {{ROLLBACK_TIME}} minutes Full rollback procedure: rollback-plan.md

5. Emergency Deployment Process

Emergency deployments require:

1. Sign-off from {{EMERGENCY_AUTHORITY}} (Engineering Manager or above)
2. At least {{EMERGENCY_REVIEWS}} code reviewer (can be async if truly urgent)
3. Staging deployment and smoke test (cannot be skipped)
4. Enhanced post-deploy monitoring for {{EMERGENCY_MONITOR}}h
5. Full retroactive change request within {{CR_SLA}}h of deployment

Emergency deployment allowed: Security vulnerabilities, data loss bugs, P1 service outages

6. Deployment Window & Blackout Periods

Standard deployment window: {{DEPLOY_WINDOW}} Emergency deployments: Any time, with approvals

Blackout periods (no production deployments):

Sign-Off

Pre-deployment confirmed by: {{ENGINEER}} on {{DATE}} at {{TIME}} Deployment completed by: {{ENGINEER}} on {{DATE}} at {{TIME}} Post-deployment verified by: {{ENGINEER}} on {{DATE}} at {{TIME}}

Related Documents

• Release Notes
• Rollback Plan
• Go-Live Runbook
• Operational Runbook

Approval