🎯 Goal: Ensure the system is stable, scalable, and production-ready before launching.
🧱 I. CODE & FUNCTIONAL Code reviewed and approved by at least one senior developer Unit test coverage ≥ 80% Edge cases handled properly No N+1 queries (GraphQL/ORM optimized) No leftover console.log or debugger in code No secrets or tokens hardcoded 🚦 II. CI/CD & DEPLOYMENT CI pipeline set up (build → test → deploy) Rollback plan in place (script or quick revert strategy) Staging/UAT environment available and tested .env variables configured correctly (not copied from local) Proper branch/tag naming (e.g. release/v1.0.0) 🔒 III. SECURITY Auth applied on all sensitive routes (JWT, OAuth, API keys) Role & permission system tested No publicly exposed sensitive endpoints (/admin, /debug) Checked for XSS, SQLi, path traversal vulnerabilities Rate limiting/throttling in place for public APIs Security headers enabled (helmet, CORS, etc.) 📈 IV. PERFORMANCE & SCALING Load tested for target RPS (e.g. ≥ 10k req/s) Concurrent users simulated (e.g. 1k logins) DB indexed properly (EXPLAIN ANALYZE used) Redis, CDN, or in-memory caching applied File/media offloaded to external storage (e.g. S3) API only returns necessary data (REST/GraphQL select) 🧠 V. MONITORING & ALERTING Logging integrated (Winston, Pino, ELK, Datadog, etc.) Logs include traceId, userId, route context Metrics collection: Prometheus / Grafana / OpenTelemetry Alert configured for: High error rate (5xx) CPU > 80% Memory full Queue backlog increasing ⚙️ VI. INFRASTRUCTURE Load balancer configured and stable Auto-restart and healthcheck ready (PM2, Docker, k8s readiness) Database backup and restore tested Horizontal scaling/pod autoscaling set up if using k8s .env.production encrypted or managed via Vault 📋 VII. OTHER Changelog written (CHANGELOG.md) Release announcement sent to relevant teams Post-deploy checklist created (Smoke test UI/API) QA checklist completed (login, checkout, error, etc.) Graceful fallback UI for error handling /status, /health, /metrics, /version endpoints ready ✅ READY TO GO LIVE? Goal Ready? Code clean and stable ✅ Load test passed ✅ Monitoring in place ✅ Rollback plan confirmed ✅ Stakeholders notified ✅ 🔁 POST GO-LIVE ACTIONS Real-time system monitoring active User feedback monitored Latency/error rate observed 24h go-live report or postmortem (if needed)