17. Launch Checklist

The launch checklist ensures all prerequisites are met before production traffic. It covers infrastructure, security, monitoring, and documentation. Each item should be verified and signed off.

Infrastructure Readiness

• Production environment provisioned with required capacity
• Domain name registered and DNS configured
• TLS certificates obtained and auto-renewal configured
• Load balancer configured with health checks
• Database backups scheduled and tested
• Redis persistence configured
• Object storage configured for document storage

Security Verification

• All services require authentication
• Rate limiting configured at API gateway
• Input validation on all endpoints
• File upload validation (type, size, magic bytes)
• SQL injection protection (parameterized queries)
• Secrets stored securely (not in code or logs)
• Security scan completed with no high findings
• Penetration test completed (if applicable)

Monitoring and Alerting

• Prometheus collecting metrics from all services
• Grafana dashboards deployed
• Alerts configured for:
  • Service downtime
  • High latency (>5s p95)
  • Error rate >1%
  • Queue depth >100
  • Disk usage >80%
  • Memory usage >90%
• On-call rotation configured
• Alert notification channels tested

Data and Storage

• Database migrations tested in staging
• Document storage quota configured
• Backup retention policy configured
• Data retention policy documented
• GDPR compliance verified (if EU users)

Documentation

• User guide complete
• API documentation accurate
• Deployment runbook tested
• Incident response plan documented
• Support contacts established

Testing

• Unit tests passing (>80% coverage)
• Integration tests passing
• Load test completed at 2x expected traffic
• Chaos engineering tests completed
• Rollback tested successfully

Launch Approval

Post-Launch

• Verify analytics tracking
• Confirm error reporting active
• Monitor dashboards for 24 hours
• Announce to users
• Schedule 1-week health check