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CI/CD Pipeline Checklist

Source Code Management

Restrict repository access to current engineers

Enforce branch protection on main

Require signed commits on release branches

Verify CODEOWNERS covers critical paths

Confirm offsite Git backup is current

Build Automation

Pin the builder image to a specific digest

Cache dependencies in the build runner

Run SAST scan during the build

Sign and attest the build artifact

Publish artifact to the internal registry

Test Gates

Run unit tests with coverage threshold

Run integration tests against ephemeral environment

Run end-to-end smoke tests in staging

Capture test artifacts on failure

File defect ticket and halt the pipeline

Deployment

Open the change request in ITSM

Deploy to staging via the pipeline

Promote to production using canary rollout

Monitor health for the bake period

Decide on full release or rollback

Execute rollback to the previous version

Security and Compliance

Scan container images for CVEs

Verify secrets come from the vault

Check SBOM against license policy

Log the deployment to the audit trail

Schedule the quarterly access review

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CI/CD Pipeline Review Checklist

Version Control & Branch Hygiene

Confirm the team's branching strategy

Audit branch protection rules on main

Verify CODEOWNERS routes review requests

Review the feature flag inventory

Automated Testing

Review unit test coverage thresholds

Confirm integration tests gate PR merges

Audit the flaky test quarantine list

Verify the e2e suite runs against staging

Build Pipeline

Run SAST and lint on every PR

Generate the SBOM during build

Sign release artifacts in the registry

Deployment Automation

Confirm the deployment strategy

Verify the canary cohort dashboard

Run a rollback drill against staging

Check IaC drift detection runs nightly

Observability & Alerting

Audit golden-signal dashboards per service

Verify PagerDuty routes to the current rotation

Review SLOs and error budgets

Security & Compliance

Confirm the regulatory scope

Pull SOC 2 change-management evidence

Triage open CVEs from Dependabot

Verify secrets live in Vault, not .env files

Documentation & Sign-Off

Update the CI/CD pipeline runbook

Capture the review sign-off

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Deployment Checklist

Pre-Release Preparation

Cut the release branch and tag the RC

Verify changelog entries for merged PRs

Run the full e2e suite against the RC build

QA smoke-test the critical user paths

Confirm the rollback plan is viable

Notify support of customer-visible changes

Database Migration Review

Review the migration for table locks

Dry-run the migration against a prod-sized snapshot

Confirm the backward-compatibility strategy

Release Day Pre-Deploy

Confirm no active SEV1 or SEV2 incidents

Confirm release captain and on-call availability

Post the deploy window to #engineering

Deploy

Run the database migration

Deploy the backend canary at 5% traffic

Roll out the backend to 25%, 50%, then 100%

Deploy the frontend bundle

Run the post-deploy synthetic smoke test

Rollback

Declare a rollback and page the on-call

Redeploy the previous container image

Confirm error rate returns to baseline

Post-Deploy Monitoring

Watch error rate and p99 for 30 minutes

Flip planned feature flags

Watch the support inbound for spikes

Wrap-Up

Tag the deployed sha as the release version

Publish release notes and update the changelog

File tickets for issues found during deploy

Capture release outcome and retro decision

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Deployment Plan Checklist

Pre-Deployment Preparation

Cut the release branch and tag the candidate

Run the full e2e suite against staging

Confirm the rollback plan is reversible

Notify support of customer-visible changes

Release Day Pre-Deploy

Confirm no active SEV1 or SEV2 incidents

Post the deploy window to #engineering

Verify on-call coverage is staffed

Deploy

Run the database migration

Deploy the backend canary at 5% traffic

Promote the backend to 100%

Deploy the frontend bundle

Run the post-deploy smoke test

Rollback

Declare a rollback in #engineering

Revert to the previous container image

Confirm error rate has recovered

Post-Deploy Monitoring

Watch error rate and p99 latency

Check Sentry for new error signatures

Flip planned feature flags

Watch support inbound for spikes

Wrap-Up

Tag the deployed sha as the release

Publish release notes and changelog

Schedule a post-deploy retro

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Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Checklist

Version Control and Branching

Pin the Terraform version in .terraform-version

Open a feature branch off main

Write conventional-commit messages

Testing and Continuous Integration

Run terraform plan against the staging workspace

Execute Terratest unit and integration suites

Trigger the IaC pipeline on push

Security and Compliance Scanning

Run tfsec and Checkov against the module

Record scan severity findings

Triage Critical and High findings before merge

Documentation and Knowledge Sharing

Update the module README with input and output changes

Regenerate the terraform-docs reference

Post the change summary in #infra-changes

Configuration Management

Confirm resources are declarative and idempotent

Move new secrets into Vault or AWS Secrets Manager

Parameterize environment differences via tfvars

Monitoring and Performance

Add Datadog or CloudWatch monitors for new resources

Wire alerts to the existing PagerDuty service

Verify dashboards reflect the new resource set

Dependency Management

Pin provider and module versions in versions.tf

Review open Renovate or Dependabot upgrade PRs

Test pinned upgrades in the sandbox workspace

Code Review and Apply

Request review from the CODEOWNERS infra team

Classify the change risk level

Obtain a second approver for High-risk changes

Apply the plan and tag the release

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Quarterly DevOps Security Review

Infrastructure Security

Patch domain controllers and hypervisors

Audit firewall rules against the baseline

Verify VLAN segmentation by trust tier

Enforce MFA and block legacy auth in Entra ID

Rotate service account credentials via PAM

Application Pipeline Security

Run SAST scan against the main branch

Remediate critical SAST findings before deploy

Run DAST against the staging environment

Review SBOM for CVE-flagged dependencies

Validate WAF rules cover OWASP Top 10

Confirm secrets scanner blocks committed credentials

Data Protection and Backup

Confirm full-disk encryption on all endpoints

Verify TLS 1.2+ on all public endpoints

Run restore drill from immutable backup

Open P1 ticket with backup vendor

Review file-share access against role baseline

Tag sensitive data per classification policy

Incident Response Readiness

Confirm IR plan reflects current on-call roster

Run tabletop with a SEV1 ransomware scenario

Verify out-of-band comms channel works

Update asset criticality tier in CMDB

Update IR plan with named tabletop gaps

Monitoring and SIEM Hygiene

Verify SIEM ingest from all critical sources

Tune detection rules from last quarter's alerts

Confirm log retention meets compliance baseline

Validate immutable log storage with object lock

Review weekly SIEM anomaly digest

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Release Checklist

Pre-Release Preparation

Cut the release branch from main

Confirm changelog entries for merged PRs

Run the full e2e suite in staging

Verify the rollback plan

Determine whether a DB migration ships

Release Day Pre-Deploy

Confirm no active SEV1 or SEV2 incidents

Confirm release captain and on-call coverage

Post the release announcement to engineering

Lock main to release-blocking PRs only

Deploy

Deploy the database migration first

Deploy the backend canary at 5% traffic

Evaluate the canary smoke result

Roll back to the previous container image

Roll out backend to 25%, 50%, 100%

Deploy the frontend after backend stabilizes

Run the production smoke test

Post-Deploy Monitoring

Watch the error-rate dashboard for 30 minutes

Watch p99 latency for 30 minutes

Monitor support inbound for spikes

Flip planned feature flags

Update the customer-facing status page

Wrap-Up

Tag the deployed sha as the release version

Publish release notes and changelog

Send the release summary to engineering

File hotfix tickets for issues found

Schedule retro if anything went sideways

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Release Notes Checklist

Release Summary

Capture version number and release type

Draft the release summary paragraph

List the top customer-visible changes

Features and Improvements

List new features merged since last release

Describe enhancements to existing features

Link each entry to its PR and ticket

Bug Fixes

Enumerate customer-reported bugs fixed

Reference Jira or Linear ticket numbers

Note known issues still outstanding

Compatibility and Requirements

Document changes to system requirements

Flag breaking API changes

List deprecated features and sunset dates

Upgrade Instructions

Document the database migration scope

Write the step-by-step upgrade guide

Document the rollback plan

Write the data backfill runbook

Write the breaking-change migration guide

Acknowledgments

Credit internal contributors and reviewers

List new third-party dependencies and licenses

Support and Contact Information

Add support channel and SLA references

Link the issue tracker for bug reports

Review and Publish

Route the draft to PM and engineering lead

Publish to the changelog and status page

Announce in #engineering and customer Slack

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Release Planning Checklist

Backlog Review & Refinement

Confirm tickets have acceptance criteria

Flag cross-team dependencies and blockers

Tag candidate tickets with the release version

Release Scope Definition

Lock release scope with product and tech lead

Inventory feature flags for gradual rollout

Capture whether the release ships a DB migration

Risk & Security Review

Review SCA findings for new dependencies

Threat-model new external endpoints

Document the rollback decision criteria

Database Migration Planning

Confirm the migration is reversible

Plan the backfill in batches

Rehearse migration on a production-sized clone

Capacity & Resource Planning

Confirm release captain and on-call coverage

Reserve the deploy window on the team calendar

Verify staging matches production configuration

QA & Test Strategy

Run the full e2e suite against the release candidate

Identify regression-risk areas for manual smoke testing

Capture QA sign-off on the release candidate

Halt release and schedule a fix cycle

Communication & Release Notes

Draft customer-facing release notes

Brief support on customer-visible changes

Post the release window in #engineering

Deployment & Rollback Planning

Verify the previous container image is in the registry

Walk through the rollback runbook end-to-end

Tag the release candidate sha

Monitoring & Support Readiness

Confirm dashboards cover the new services

Set SLO alert thresholds for new endpoints

Brief on-call on the hotfix process

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Rollback Plan Checklist

Pre-Release Preparation

Capture the current production sha and image tag

Confirm the migration is reversible

Assign release captain and rollback IC

Verify rollback runbook is current

Backup and Restore Validation

Trigger a pre-deploy RDS snapshot

Restore the snapshot to a scratch instance

Confirm prior container image is in the registry

Monitoring and Trigger Criteria

Open the release dashboard in Datadog

Define the rollback trigger thresholds

Page the on-call rotation in PagerDuty

Rollback Decision

Evaluate canary signals at 5% traffic

Rollback Execution

Flip the kill switch feature flag

Drain canary traffic back to the prior version

Redeploy the prior container image

Reverse the database migration if safe

Run smoke tests against production

Communication and Documentation

Post status page update for affected customers

File the incident ticket in Jira

Post-Incident Review

Schedule a blameless PIR within five business days

Identify contributing factors with the 5-whys method

File action items in Jira with named owners

Update the rollback runbook with lessons learned

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Software Update Checklist

Planning and Preparation

Review release notes and breaking changes

Confirm rollback plan and prior image retention

Verify infrastructure and dependency requirements

Snapshot the production database

Testing and Quality Assurance

Run the full unit and integration suite

Execute end-to-end tests against staging

QA smoke-test critical user paths

Run a security and dependency scan

Pre-Deploy Coordination

Confirm no active SEV1 or SEV2 incidents

Notify stakeholders of the deploy window

Confirm release captain and on-call coverage

Production Deploy

Apply the database migration

Deploy backend canary at 5 percent

Roll out backend to 100 percent

Deploy the frontend bundle

Roll back the deploy

Verification and Monitoring

Run the production smoke test

Watch the golden-signals dashboard for 30 minutes

Check Sentry for new error signatures

Confirm customer support volume is steady

Wrap-Up

Tag the release and publish notes

Update runbooks and architecture docs

Capture the change record for audit

Schedule a post-incident review

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Testing Environment Setup Checklist

Infrastructure Provisioning

Choose hosted vs. self-managed infrastructure

Provision the VPC and subnets via Terraform

Validate hardware capacity for the workload

Configure backup and snapshot schedule

Software and Dependencies

Install the base OS image and apply patches

Install middleware, databases, and runtime dependencies

Audit OSS license compliance for new dependencies

Source Control and CI/CD

Connect the repo and configure branch protection

Build the CI pipeline for the test environment

Configure the deployment pipeline to test

Seed the test database with anonymized fixtures

Security Baseline

Configure security groups and VPN access

Set up SSO and RBAC for environment access

Move secrets into the secrets manager

Run a baseline vulnerability scan

Test Tooling

Install unit and integration test runners

Wire up the e2e suite (Playwright or Cypress)

Configure load-test tooling

Observability

Connect logs, metrics, and traces

Build dashboards for the golden signals

Wire alerts to PagerDuty or Opsgenie

Handover and Documentation

Write the environment runbook

Run a walkthrough for the engineering team

Sign off the environment for team use

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Version Control Checklist

Repository Setup

Initialize the repo with README and .gitignore

Add LICENSE and CODEOWNERS files

Set the repository visibility

Publish CONTRIBUTING and CODE_OF_CONDUCT files

Branch Management

Document the branching strategy

Configure branch protection on main

Enable auto-delete of merged branches

Commit Practices

Adopt Conventional Commits for messages

Install pre-commit hooks for secret scanning

Block direct pushes to main

Code Review and Merging

Require CODEOWNERS approval on protected paths

Wire CI status checks as required for merge

Enforce a PR size budget

Pick a merge strategy

Release Management

Tag the release with semantic versioning

Update the CHANGELOG for this version

Cut the release from a dedicated branch or tag

Run the post-release smoke suite

Roll back to the previous tag

Collaboration and Communication

Wire the repo to Jira or Linear

Publish PR and issue templates

Capture the release announcement link

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