The following checklist summarizes the recommended tasks to be completed prior to deploying the application in production.
The application has to be thoroughly tested and certified from the Quality Assurance (QA) environment to preproduction. This process should be automated and fully documented so it can be replicated from preproduction to production without errors.
Live testing by internal and external users should be conducted the day before the deployment of the application. Some customers may choose to have a handful of users come in early on that day to ensure the application works as expected.
The application has to be benchmarked and established Service Level Agreements confirmed as being met in the preproduction environment.
Business users must be adequately trained to use the application.
All administrators must be adequately trained to support the application.
For application upgrades, contingency plans must be established to either restore an earlier version of the application or run the earlier version in parallel. This contingency plan will address unexpected issues should they arise. Some customers may choose to create an image of the machine that hosts the earlier application. It can then be easily restored with minimal disruption to the production users.
Deployment of the application has to be timed so it does not coincide with critical processing times.
Deployment of the application should occur after business hours to minimize disruptions.
Business users, developers, and all administrators should be notified of the deployment of the application.
Early notification of application rollout and timeframes including a published schedule available on one of the following:
Secure necessary resources to support the application:
Application documentation has been reviewed according to company standards.
Support documentation has been reviewed according to company standards.
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