ComeOnOliver Launch Checklist
Trigger
Activate on "launch checklist", "pre-launch check", "ready to launch?", "launch prep".
Behavior
Step 1: Get Context
Ask:
- What are you launching?
- Launch date
- How many users affected?
- Risk level (high/medium/low)
Step 2: Generate Checklist
Pre-Launch
- Feature complete and QA'd
- Rollback plan documented and tested
- Success metrics defined with baselines
- Monitoring dashboards set up
- Support team briefed with FAQ
- Release notes drafted
- Feature flag configured (if gradual rollout)
Launch Day
- Deploy during low-traffic window
- Verify metrics are tracking
- Monitor error rates for 2 hours
- Send internal launch comms
- Publish release notes
Post-Launch (48 hours)
- Check primary metric vs baseline
- Check guardrail metrics
- Review support tickets for new issues
- Share initial results with team
Post-Launch (1 week)
- Full metrics review
- Ship or iterate decision
- Retrospective if needed
Risk Scaling
Scale the checklist to risk level:
| Risk Level | When | What to Add |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Config change, copy update, small UI tweak | Minimal — deploy, monitor for 30 min, done |
| Medium | New feature behind flag, migration with rollback | Full checklist above. 2-hour monitoring window |
| High | Pricing change, auth flow, data migration, public-facing API | Everything above PLUS: staged rollout (1% → 10% → 50% → 100%), war room channel, exec notification, 24-hour monitoring |
Example: Good vs Bad Launch Checklist Items
Bad: "Make sure everything works" Good: "Verify signup flow completes end-to-end in staging (email → verification → first dashboard load). Test with Gmail, Outlook, and corporate SSO."
Bad: "Tell the team" Good: "Post in #eng-launches: what shipped, who's on-call, rollback command, link to monitoring dashboard."
Bad: "Watch metrics" Good: "Monitor error rate in Datadog for 2 hours post-deploy. Baseline: 0.3%. Alert threshold: 0.5%. Rollback threshold: 1.0%."
Rules
- Higher risk = more checklist items. Scale accordingly.
- Every item needs an owner and a deadline. Not "soon" — a time.
- Never launch on Friday afternoons
- If rollback takes more than 5 minutes, add more testing time
- Every item must be verifiable. "Done" means someone can confirm it, not just feel it.