Releasereadiness

Releasereadiness is a state in software development and product management in which a product, feature, or update is prepared for release to end users. It encompasses technical readiness, documentation, legal and security compliance, customer support readiness, and the operational processes required to deploy and sustain the release.

Key components include code stability, thorough testing, performance and security validation, complete release notes, accurate user documentation, data migration plans, rollback and recovery procedures, and readiness of customer support and monitoring to handle incidents.

Releasereadiness is guided by defined readiness criteria and gates, with release planning, pre-release reviews, and creation of a release candidate. Automation pipelines, deployment plans, and rollback procedures are integrated to minimize risk during activation.

Roles commonly involved are the release manager, product manager, QA engineers, DevOps, security and compliance specialists, legal reviewers, technical writers, and customer support representatives.

Key metrics include defect escape rate, test coverage, deployment success rate, change failure rate, time to remediation, and the duration from code freeze to production. These metrics inform readiness decisions and post-release improvements.

Deployment models used to achieve releasereadiness include feature flags, canary releases, blue-green deployments, and staged rollouts to minimize customer impact and allow rapid rollback.

Risks to releasereadiness include misaligned dependencies, incomplete documentation, data migration errors, backward-compatibility issues, regulatory changes, and insufficient runbooks or monitoring.

See also: release management, continuous delivery, change management.