deployment-plan

name	Deployment Plan
description	This skill should be used when the user asks to "create a deployment plan", "plan the release", "design the rollout strategy", "define rollback procedures", "plan the go-live", "create a release checklist", or needs to plan how a feature or service will be deployed to production.
version	1.0.0

Deployment Plan

Produce a detailed deployment plan with rollout strategy, go/no-go criteria, rollback procedures, and a release checklist. Treat every production deployment as a risk management exercise.

Overview

A deployment plan is not an afterthought — it is the bridge between working code and a production service. This skill produces a plan that is executable by any engineer on the team, not only the person who wrote the code.

Deployment Strategy Selection

Select the appropriate strategy based on risk and system characteristics:

Strategy	When to Use	Rollback Speed	Risk
Rolling update	Stateless services, low risk	Fast (redeploy)	Low
Blue-Green	Zero-downtime required, fast rollback needed	Instant (switch)	Low
Canary	High-traffic, gradual risk validation needed	Fast (redirect traffic)	Very Low
Feature flags	Business-controlled release, A/B testing	Instant (toggle)	Very Low
Big bang	Schema migrations, monolith, unavoidable downtime	Slow (manual rollback)	High

For database schema changes: always use backwards-compatible migrations (expand/contract pattern).

Deployment Plan Structure

# Deployment Plan: [Service/Feature Name]
Release Date: [YYYY-MM-DD] | Release Manager: [Role]

## Deployment Strategy
[Selected strategy and rationale]

## Pre-Deployment Checklist
- [ ] All acceptance criteria passing in staging
- [ ] Performance baseline validated in staging
- [ ] Security gate PASSED
- [ ] Database migrations tested and reversible
- [ ] Runbook reviewed by on-call engineer
- [ ] Rollback procedure tested in staging
- [ ] Monitoring dashboards prepared
- [ ] On-call engineer briefed and available
- [ ] Change record raised (if required)

## Deployment Steps
| Step | Action | Owner | Duration | Validation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Run DB migration] | DevOps | 5 min | [verify row count] |
| 2 | [Deploy new container version] | DevOps | 3 min | [health check passes] |
| 3 | [Smoke test critical paths] | QA | 10 min | [checklist passes] |
| 4 | [Enable feature flag for 10% of traffic] | Product | 1 min | [error rate stable] |
| 5 | [Monitor for 30 minutes] | On-call | 30 min | [SLOs met] |
| 6 | [Enable for 100% of traffic] | Product | 1 min | [error rate stable] |

## Go/No-Go Criteria
**Go**: All pre-deployment checklist items checked AND error rate < [threshold] in first 10 minutes
**No-Go**: Any pre-deployment checklist item not met OR error rate > [threshold] at any point

## Rollback Procedure
| Trigger | Action | Owner | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Error rate > [X]% | Disable feature flag / revert traffic | On-call | < 2 min |
| Service unavailable | Redeploy previous image | DevOps | < 5 min |
| Data corruption | Roll back DB migration | DBA | [estimate] |

## Post-Deployment Checklist
- [ ] SLOs met for 1 hour post-deployment
- [ ] No P0 or P1 incidents raised
- [ ] Deployment notes updated in runbook
- [ ] Feature flag removal task created (with date)
- [ ] Stakeholders notified of successful release

Additional Resources

• references/migration-patterns.md — Backwards-compatible database migration patterns
• assets/deployment-plan-template.md — Blank deployment plan template