Planning for production

The key to a successful production deployment is planning and preparation.

Consider the following questions when planning for production deployment:

Hard launch or soft launch?: In a hard launch, your solution is rolled out to all of your users at the same time. In a soft launch, your solution is rolled out to only a select group of users.
The advantage of a soft launch is that it enables you to trial your new solution with a subset of your users and discover any remaining issues before rolling out to your whole user base.
Will your users experience any down-time?: How will your deployment affect existing users? Will their clients experience a disconnection? Will the deployment of your new solution force them to upgrade their client version before they can continue to use your solution?
Understand what your users will experience during your deployment and what experience you want them to have.
When are you going to roll out to production?: Select a time that fits best with your business. Consider when you have the most users, when you have certain events for which your system needs to be up, and when your team are available to support and troubleshoot the deployment.
Who do you need to notify in advance?: Do you need to notify your users of upcoming down-time? Do you need to notify your user of actions they must take? Do you have any third parties that provide data or services who need to be notified?
How are you deploying your solution to production?: Are you rolling out all of the components of your solution or just changing some of them? What order are you deploying your components in? Are you going to automate all or some of the deployment process?
What is your roll back plan if something unforeseen happens?: Even with the best testing and planning, problems an occur in a production environment. Developing a strategy in advance for handling problems ensures that you can react quickly if problems occur.

Prepare a go-live checklist

After you have considered all aspects of your deployment, we recommend that you create a go-live checklist detailing all of the tasks necessary across your organization in order to go live.