Release Planning

Position in workflow: v0.7 Implementation Loop → v0.8 Release Planning → v0.8 Runbook Creation

Purpose

Transform completed EPICs into production-ready releases by defining deployment environments, release criteria, rollback triggers, and operational readiness gates.

Core Concept: Release as Contract

A release is not "code that works locally." It is a contract between development and operations—a formal handoff that includes everything needed to deploy, validate, and recover.

Release Components

| Component | Purpose | Output | |-----------|---------|--------| | Deployment Environment | Where code runs | DEP- (environment config) | | Release Criteria | What must be true to deploy | DEP- (checklist) | | Rollback Triggers | When to revert | DEP- (conditions) | | Validation Steps | How to verify success | DEP- (post-deploy checks) |

Execution

Inventory completed EPICs
- Which EPIC- entries are "Complete"?
- What API-, DBT-, FEA- are included in this release?
Define deployment environments
- Staging, Production, Preview
- Environment-specific configurations
- Secrets management approach
Establish release criteria
- All TEST- pass in staging
- Performance baselines met (from MON-)
- No critical RISK- blockers
- Security review complete
Define rollback triggers
- Error rate thresholds
- Latency thresholds
- User-reported critical issues
- Data integrity concerns
Document validation steps
- Post-deployment smoke tests
- Key journey verification (UJ-)
- Metric baseline confirmation
Create DEP- entries with full traceability

DEP- Output Template

DEP-XXX: [Deployment Item Title]
Type: [Environment | Criteria | Rollback | Validation | Step]
Stage: [Pre-deploy | Deploy | Post-deploy | Rollback]

Description: [What this deployment item covers]

For Environment Type:
  Name: [staging | production | preview]
  Infrastructure: [Cloud provider, region, resources]
  Configuration: [Environment-specific settings]
  Secrets: [How secrets are managed]
  Access: [Who can deploy, who can access]

For Criteria Type:
  Requirement: [What must be true]
  Verification: [How to check this]
  Blocker: [Yes | No] — Does failure block deploy?
  Owner: [Who verifies]

For Rollback Type:
  Trigger: [What condition initiates rollback]
  Threshold: [Specific metric or condition]
  Procedure: [How to execute rollback]
  Notification: [Who to alert]

For Validation Type:
  Check: [What to verify post-deploy]
  Method: [Manual | Automated | Both]
  Success Criteria: [Expected result]
  Escalation: [What if validation fails]

Linked IDs: [EPIC-XXX, API-XXX, TEST-XXX related]

Example DEP- entries:

DEP-001: Production Environment Configuration
Type: Environment
Stage: Pre-deploy

Description: AWS production environment setup for main application

Name: production
Infrastructure: AWS us-east-1, ECS Fargate, RDS PostgreSQL
Configuration:
  - NODE_ENV=production
  - LOG_LEVEL=info
  - RATE_LIMIT=100/min
Secrets: AWS Secrets Manager, rotated monthly
Access: DevOps team (deploy), On-call (read-only)

Linked IDs: ARC-001, TECH-005

DEP-002: All Tests Pass in Staging
Type: Criteria
Stage: Pre-deploy

Description: Complete test suite must pass in staging environment

Requirement: All TEST- entries pass with >95% success rate
Verification: CI/CD pipeline green status, test report review
Blocker: Yes
Owner: QA Lead

Linked IDs: TEST-001 to TEST-050

DEP-003: Error Rate Rollback Trigger
Type: Rollback
Stage: Post-deploy

Description: Automatic rollback if error rate exceeds threshold

Trigger: 5xx error rate exceeds baseline
Threshold: >2% of requests for 5 minutes
Procedure:
  1. Alert on-call engineer
  2. Pause traffic to new version (if canary)
  3. Revert to previous known-good version
  4. Investigate root cause
Notification: #incidents Slack, PagerDuty

Linked IDs: MON-001, RUN-005

Environment Progression

| Stage | Environment | Purpose | Gate | |-------|-------------|---------|------| | 1 | Development | Engineer testing | Tests pass locally | | 2 | Staging | Integration testing | All TEST- pass | | 3 | Preview | Stakeholder review | Sign-off from PM | | 4 | Production | Live users | All DEP- criteria met |

Release Criteria Categories

| Category | Examples | Priority | |----------|----------|----------| | Functional | Tests pass, features work | Must-have | | Performance | Latency <200ms, throughput >100rps | Must-have | | Security | No critical vulns, secrets rotated | Must-have | | Operational | Runbooks ready, monitoring active | Should-have | | Documentation | Release notes, API docs updated | Should-have |

Rollback Strategy Patterns

| Pattern | When to Use | Complexity | |---------|-------------|------------| | Blue-Green | Need instant rollback, can afford 2x infra | Medium | | Canary | Gradual rollout, catch issues early | High | | Rolling | Zero-downtime, standard approach | Low | | Feature Flags | Decouple deploy from release | Medium |

Anti-Patterns

| Pattern | Signal | Fix | |---------|--------|-----| | Deploy and pray | No validation steps defined | Add DEP- validation entries | | Manual everything | No automation, error-prone | Automate repeatable steps | | No rollback plan | "We'll figure it out" | Define triggers and procedures upfront | | Environment drift | Staging doesn't match production | Infrastructure as code, sync configs | | Missing criteria | "It works on my machine" | Formal DEP- criteria checklist | | Unclear ownership | No one knows who approves | Assign owner to each DEP- |

Quality Gates

Before proceeding to Runbook Creation:

[ ] All deployment environments documented (DEP- Environment type)
[ ] Release criteria defined with clear blockers (DEP- Criteria type)
[ ] Rollback triggers specified with thresholds (DEP- Rollback type)
[ ] Post-deploy validation steps defined (DEP- Validation type)
[ ] Each DEP- entry has an owner
[ ] Criteria trace back to EPIC-, TEST-, API- IDs

Downstream Connections

| Consumer | What It Uses | Example | |----------|--------------|---------| | Runbook Creation | DEP- rollback procedures become runbook inputs | DEP-003 → RUN-005 | | Monitoring Setup | DEP- thresholds inform alerting | DEP-003 (2% error) → MON-001 | | v0.9 GTM Strategy | Release readiness gates launch | All DEP- met → GTM-001 | | EPIC- Future Releases | DEP- becomes template for next release | DEP-001 reused |

Detailed References

Environment configuration examples: See references/environment-examples.md
DEP- entry template: See assets/dep-template.md
Rollback procedure guide: See references/rollback-guide.md