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Pre-Production Release & Smoke Sign-Off Checklist

A comprehensive, interactive checklist for QA leads, release managers, and DevOps teams to gate deployments into staging and production environments.

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Checklist Completion

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0 of 16 items completed0% Done
📦1. Scope & Build Verification
0/3
Git release tag & commit hash verified.
Example: Ensure the build artifact matches the signed-off commit hash (e.g. release-v2.4.0) with no unmerged hotfix commits.
Release notes & changelog finalized.
Example: JIRA release version closed; all customer-facing features and bug fixes documented with issue keys.
Feature flags & environment variables configured.
Example: Verify LaunchDarkly/Split flags for new features are set to the correct rollout percentages (e.g., 0% or internal beta).
🧪2. Automated Regression & Quality Gates
0/3
End-to-End automated regression test suite 100% green.
Example: All critical user journeys (Sign-up, Search, Checkout, Billing) executed without unexpected failures or quarantined tests.
Unit & Integration test coverage gates cleared.
Example: SonarQube / Codecov reports meet threshold (>80% coverage, 0 critical security vulnerabilities, 0 blocker bugs).
API contract tests (Pact / OpenAPI) validated.
Example: Ensures no breaking schema changes between backend microservices and web/mobile clients.
💾3. Database & Migration Readiness
0/3
Database schema migration scripts dry-run passed.
Example: Flyway/Liquibase migration scripts applied in staging with zero locks, data truncation, or syntax errors.
Rollback migration & data backup confirmed.
Example: Pre-deployment database snapshot taken; downward migration script (revert) tested and documented.
Lookup tables & reference data populated.
Example: Currency rates, country codes, and payment gateway config constants populated in production DB.
🛡️4. Non-Functional & Security Checks
0/3
DAST/SAST & dependency vulnerability scans resolved.
Example: Snyk / OWASP Dependency Check reported zero High/Critical CVEs in third-party npm/maven packages.
Performance p95 latency SLOs validated under load.
Example: Peak load run confirms response times stay under 800ms with error rate < 0.05%.
SSL/TLS certificates and domain DNS validity confirmed.
Example: Production domain certs checked for expiration dates (> 60 days remaining).
🚀5. Production Deployment & Live Sanity
0/4
Deployment window & war-room channel active.
Example: On-call QA, Lead DevOps, and Product Lead present in dedicated #release-war-room channel.
Post-deployment production smoke test completed.
Example: Live transaction executed using designated test accounts with zero 5xx server errors in Datadog/Grafana.
APM alerts & error dashboards monitored for 30 minutes.
Example: Sentry error rate, AWS CloudWatch CPU usage, and payment gateway webhooks running within normal baselines.
Formal QA sign-off communicated to stakeholders.
Example: Confirmation email sent with test summary, monitoring logs, and formal 'GO' status.

Deployment Escalation Matrix​