Engineering Practice
Production Readiness: What “Done” Actually Means
Working software is only part of done. A production system also needs observable, secure, accessible, recoverable operations.
Done includes operation
A production-ready capability has defined ownership, useful logging, actionable monitoring, controlled configuration, documented deployment, and a recovery path. Teams should know how failure becomes visible and who responds.
Quality is multi-dimensional
Functional tests do not replace security review, accessibility, performance validation, dependency management, analytics, error handling, and realistic environment checks. Each discipline reduces a different class of production risk.
Use explicit launch evidence
Maintain a release checklist tied to the system’s risk profile. Verify critical journeys, monitoring, backup and restore expectations, rollback, support handoff, and post-launch measurement before declaring the work complete.