ICS 121: Release Checklists

Release checklists are documents that help the team to produce a release without skipping key steps or ignoring the concerns of key stakeholders
You can think of a release checklist as count-down to blast-off. Each department (group of stakeholders) must affirmatively state that their aspect of the product is a "go". When "all systems are go", then the product can launch.

Development teams do not use release checklists everyday.
- Throughout most of the development process, the issue tracker is better.
- Only when all tracked issues for this release are resolved, does the team switch to using the release checklist.
- It might take a week to work through the release checklist
The release checklist complements the issue tracker because
- All departments are represented equally
- Stakeholders must affirmatively state that they are satisfied, silence does not imply commitment to support the release later.
When mistakes are made on one release, a release checklist is a simple tool for process improvement on the next release. E.g., "let's never make that mistake again."