🎯 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?

GoalReady?
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)