Production deploys without the 3am rollback panic.
Most production incidents are preventable. Missing alerts, untested rollback plans, and skipped load tests are the usual suspects. This template enforces the checks that get skipped under deadline pressure, with two sign-off gates that create a record the review actually happened.
For engineering & platform teams. No credit card. First run in under a minute.
Prod Review: Payment Service v2.1
Deploy window: Dec 18, 02:00 UTC · On-call: Sarah Chen
- Security review100%SecurityEvidence
- Observability checkPlatformEvidence
- Rollback planEngineeringTested
- Load testingQASLA baseline
- Engineering lead sign-offLeadApproval gateDep. pendente
- Deploy window confirmedBLOQUEADAOperationsApproval gateDep. pendente
Opinion
What we cut. And what we kept.
Most readiness checklists are designed for annual launches. We kept only what prevents the common causes of 3am pages.
Cut
- Comprehensive architecture reviews nobody finishes.
- Load tests run against staging, not production config.
- Rollback plans documented but never executed.
- Observability gaps discovered post-deploy.
Kept
- Security review with dependency audit.
- Rollback plan tested with estimated time.
- Load testing against SLA baseline.
- Engineering lead gate before deploy window.
What this template includes
Process steps
- 1Security review: dependency audit, secrets management, auth flows verified
- 2Observability: alerts, dashboards, and on-call runbook confirmed in place
- 3Rollback plan: documented, tested, and estimated time confirmed
- 4Load testing: baseline performance validated against SLA thresholds
- 5Engineering lead sign-off on readiness checklist, gate
- 6Deployment window confirmed, stakeholders notified, on-call engineer assigned, Operations gate
Why teams use this template
Most production incidents are preventable. Security gaps, missing alerts, and untested rollback procedures are the three most common root causes, and all three are detectable before deployment if someone is required to check.
This template enforces the checks that get skipped under deadline pressure: security review, observability confirmation, load testing, and a rollback plan that has actually been tested. Two sign-off gates create a record that the review happened.
Ready to run this process?
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