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name: prd-v08-release-planning description: > Define release criteria, deployment environments, and rollback strategies during PRD v0.8 Deployment & Ops. Triggers on requests to plan releases, define deployment criteria, or when user asks "how do we deploy?", "release criteria", "deployment plan", "rollback strategy", "go-live checklist". Outputs DEP- entries with deployment steps and release criteria.

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

Execution

1. Inventory completed EPICs

   • Which EPIC- entries are "Complete"?
   • What API-, DBT-, FEA- are included in this release?

2. Define deployment environments

   • Staging, Production, Preview
   • Environment-specific configurations
   • Secrets management approach

3. Establish release criteria

   • All TEST- pass in staging
   • Performance baselines met (from MON-)
   • No critical RISK- blockers
   • Security review complete

4. Define rollback triggers

   • Error rate thresholds
   • Latency thresholds
   • User-reported critical issues
   • Data integrity concerns

5. Document validation steps

   • Post-deployment smoke tests
   • Key journey verification (UJ-)
   • Metric baseline confirmation

6. Create DEP- entries with full traceability

DEP- Output Template

CopyDEP-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:

CopyDEP-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

CopyDEP-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

CopyDEP-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

Release Criteria Categories

Rollback Strategy Patterns

Anti-Patterns

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

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