Shipping and Launch

Overview

Ship with confidence. The goal is not just to deploy — it's to deploy safely, with monitoring in place, a rollback plan ready, and a clear understanding of what success looks like. Every launch should be reversible, observable, and incremental.

When to Use

• Deploying a feature to production for the first time
• Releasing a significant change to users
• Migrating data or infrastructure
• Opening a beta or early access program
• Any deployment that carries risk (all of them)

The Pre-Launch Checklist

Code Quality

• All tests pass (unit, integration, e2e)
• Build succeeds with no warnings
• Lint and type checking pass
• Code reviewed and approved
• No TODO comments that should be resolved before launch
• No console.log debugging statements in production code
• Error handling covers expected failure modes

Security

• No secrets in code or version control
• The ecosystem's dependency audit (npm audit, pip-audit, cargo audit, ...) shows no critical or high vulnerabilities
• Input validation on all user-facing endpoints
• Authentication and authorization checks in place
• Security headers configured (CSP, HSTS, etc.)
• Rate limiting on authentication endpoints
• CORS configured to specific origins (not wildcard)

Performance

• Core Web Vitals within "Good" thresholds
• No N+1 queries in critical paths
• Images optimized (compression, responsive sizes, lazy loading)
• Bundle size within budget
• Database queries have appropriate indexes
• Caching configured for static assets and repeated queries

Accessibility

• Keyboard navigation works for all interactive elements
• Screen reader can convey page content and structure
• Color contrast meets WCAG 2.1 AA (4.5:1 for text)
• Focus management correct for modals and dynamic content
• Error messages are descriptive and associated with form fields
• No accessibility warnings in axe-core or Lighthouse

Infrastructure

• Environment variables set in production
• Database migrations applied (or ready to apply)
• DNS and SSL configured
• CDN configured for static assets
• Logging and error reporting configured
• Health check endpoint exists and responds

Documentation

• README updated with any new setup requirements
• API documentation current
• ADRs written for any architectural decisions
• Changelog updated
• User-facing documentation updated (if applicable)

Feature Flag Strategy

Ship behind feature flags to decouple deployment from release:

// Feature flag check
const flags = await getFeatureFlags(userId);

if (flags.taskSharing) {
  // New feature: task sharing
  return <TaskSharingPanel task={task} />;
}

// Default: existing behavior
return null;

Feature flag lifecycle:

1. DEPLOY with flag OFF     → Code is in production but inactive
2. ENABLE for team/beta     → Internal testing in production environment
3. GRADUAL ROLLOUT          → 5% → 25% → 50% → 100% of users
4. MONITOR at each stage    → Watch error rates, performance, user feedback
5. CLEAN UP                 → Remove flag and dead code path after full rollout

Rules:

• Every feature flag has an owner and an expiration date
• Clean up flags within 2 weeks of full rollout
• Don't nest feature flags (creates exponential combinations)
• Test both flag states (on and off) in CI

Staged Rollout

The Rollout Sequence

1. DEPLOY to staging
   └── Full test suite in staging environment
   └── Manual smoke test of critical flows

2. DEPLOY to production (feature flag OFF)
   └── Verify deployment succeeded (health check)
   └── Check error monitoring (no new errors)

3. ENABLE for team (flag ON for internal users)
   └── Team uses the feature in production
   └── 24-hour monitoring window

4. CANARY rollout (flag ON for 5% of users)
   └── Monitor error rates, latency, user behavior
   └── Compare metrics: canary vs. baseline
   └── 24-48 hour monitoring window
   └── Advance only if all thresholds pass (see table below)

5. GRADUAL increase (25% -> 50% -> 100%)
   └── Same monitoring at each step
   └── Ability to roll back to previous percentage at any point

6. FULL rollout (flag ON for all users)
   └── Monitor for 1 week
   └── Clean up feature flag

Rollout Decision Thresholds

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