Shipping On Fridays — A Checklist
If you must ship on a Friday, here's the 12-item checklist that makes Monday not suck.
EE
Published 1mo agoUpdated 1h ago 552
Friday deploys aren't always wrong. They're risky. Here's the survival kit.
Pre-deploy
- Two people on call (not "available" — actually on).
- Rollback plan tested in the last week.
- Feature flag wraps the change, defaulting to off.
- Database migrations are reversible.
- Smoke test script ready to run post-deploy.
Deploy
- One person drives, one watches.
- Deploy starts before 2pm local.
- Smoke tests pass before announcing.
- Errors dashboards open in tabs.
Post-deploy
- Monitor for 60 minutes minimum.
- Customer support pinged about the change.
- Internal Slack updated.
Why this checklist exists
Friday deploys go wrong not because Friday is special, but because everyone wants to leave early. The checklist forces patience.
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