AIWorkDex
Product Practice

Prepare a staged release and tested stop plan

Control exposure to a release-ready change and give the owner a clear stop response.

Preparation
A release planning session plus rollback and monitoring checks.
Difficulty
Advanced
Task
Plan a controlled product release
Back to the Task: Plan a controlled product release

Before you start

Get what you need before you start

  • Bring a release-ready flagged change, technical rollback path, health signals, support capacity, and accountable owner.
  • Complete security, privacy, legal, accessibility, data migration, and operational reviews that apply.

Steps

Work through the method

Use the listed inputs and tools. Check the evidence when you need to verify a step.

  1. Define exposure stages and learning

    Choose the initial audience and each later stage from product risk, support capacity, and the evidence needed before expansion. Record exclusions and known representation limits.

    Why it matters: A limited audience creates room to learn when the exposure matches the actual product risk.

    Input
    The release brief, risk review, user groups, and operating capacity.
    Output
    A staged exposure plan with purpose and owner for every stage.
    Tools in this stepLaunchDarkly

    Evidence for this step

  2. Write and test the stop response

    Set the health signals, observation owner, decision boundary, served variation after stopping, communication route, and response for irreversible data effects. Rehearse the technical stop before exposure.

    Why it matters: A flag changes served behaviour, while separate plans must cover data and operational effects.

    Input
    The staged plan, monitoring, rollback path, and incident contacts.
    Output
    A tested stop plan with health signals, ownership, and data recovery actions.
    Tools in this stepLaunchDarkly

    Evidence for this step

  3. Configure the reviewed rollout

    Enter the approved stages and durations in LaunchDarkly. Have a second authorised reviewer compare the configuration with the plan before starting. Monitor health outside the rollout control.

    Why it matters: The configured exposure must match the reviewed plan, and metric monitoring remains a separate responsibility.

    Input
    The approved staged plan, tested stop response, and authorised reviewers.
    Output
    A reviewed progressive rollout with linked external monitoring and stop owner.
    Tools in this stepLaunchDarkly

    Evidence for this step

Success checks

Check the result before you finish

  • Every stage has a purpose, owner, health review, and expansion decision.
  • The stop response has been rehearsed.
  • External monitoring and irreversible data effects have explicit owners.

Failure modes

Watch for these problems

  • Do not start when stopping cannot protect users from the material risk.
  • Pause when the actual configuration differs from the reviewed plan.
  • Treat low traffic and unrepresentative audiences as limits on learning.

Tools

Choose the tools you need

Sources

Read the sources behind this practice

Check what each source supports and where the advice has limits.