Checklist: Pre-Production

Release And Ownership

[ ] Service owner identified
[ ] On-call or support path defined
[ ] Release owner identified
[ ] Rollback plan documented
[ ] Incident command path defined

Build And Deploy

[ ] Deployment is automated and repeatable
[ ] Immutable artifact or equivalent release package is produced
[ ] Staging or equivalent validation environment exists
[ ] Smoke checks are defined

Data And Recovery

[ ] Migrations reviewed and tested
[ ] Backup strategy documented
[ ] Restore procedure documented
[ ] Restore testing cadence defined

Security

[ ] Secrets are managed outside source control
[ ] Access is least privilege and reviewable
[ ] Dependency and vulnerability review completed
[ ] TLS and network exposure reviewed
[ ] Threat model exists for high-risk capabilities
[ ] Access review cadence is defined

Observability

[ ] Health and readiness checks exist
[ ] Structured logs exist
[ ] Critical metrics and alerts exist
[ ] Dashboards cover key user journeys

Product Verification

[ ] Critical user paths pass in pre-production
[ ] Error handling is verified
[ ] Performance is acceptable for expected load
[ ] Accessibility and compliance expectations are met where required
[ ] Runbooks exist for rollback and top incident scenarios