App launch readiness checklist

Set the launch boundary and stopping conditions

Write the release audience, environments, supported devices and browsers, data class, distribution route and smallest complete user outcome. Mark anything explicitly excluded. Define stop conditions for loss of data, incorrect authorisation, unsafe consequential action, unavailable recovery, missing legal or policy approval and any other unacceptable risk specific to the product.

Separate company-controlled readiness from external approval. The team can prove a signed build, tested deployment, complete metadata or functioning review account. Apple, Google or another provider controls its own review and availability. Keep that dependency visible and maintain a fallback such as delayed announcement, phased access or web onboarding when it genuinely fits.

Inventory journeys, dependencies and operating owners

List sign-up, sign-in, primary task, payment if applicable, account recovery, data export or deletion, support contact and administration. For each journey record data, services, permissions, failure behavior and owner. Add domains, certificates, email, analytics, notifications, app-store identities, signing, third-party SDKs and secrets without copying secret values into the checklist.

Capture current version requirements and provider policies from official sources at the time of release. Store links and review dates because target API levels, store rules and SDK obligations change. Identify who can renew credentials, answer review questions and disable a harmful integration. A launch calendar without those owners is a schedule, not operational readiness.

Rehearse release, observation and recovery

Deploy the exact candidate through the intended pipeline, with peer review and reproducible checks. Test critical journeys on representative environments, including invalid input, denied permissions, degraded dependencies, upgrade paths and accessibility. Verify that logs and alerts expose actionable failures without leaking sensitive data and that a named person receives them.

Exercise the chosen rollback, feature-disable or forward-fix path before launch. Verify backups and restoration where the product needs them. Prepare an incident channel, severity rule, decision owner and user communication path. A document saying rollback exists is weaker than a controlled rehearsal showing who can perform it and what data state results.

Hold a go, constrained-go or no-go review

Attach test reports, unresolved defects, security and accessibility findings, store materials, monitoring checks, recovery evidence and owner confirmations to one release record. Decide based on the written stop rules. A constrained release may limit audience or capability when the remaining risk is understood, observable and reversible. Do not relabel an unknown critical failure as acceptable to protect a date.

Define acceptance as observable evidence. Examples include a tested user journey, an approved build, reproducible checks, an incident runbook and a verified handover. None of those proves retention, revenue or product-market fit. Keep delivery proof, external provider approval and business results as separate claims.

Close the release into maintenance and learning

Record the deployed version, configuration, known limitations, support rotation, first observation window and next review. Confirm who owns post-launch defects, dependency updates, provider feedback and user communication. Preserve the release evidence with the repository and handover material so another authorised operator can understand what was approved and why.

Keep source control, domains, stores, analytics, cloud organisations and production credentials under explicit organisational ownership. Grant scoped, revocable access and rehearse handover before the final invoice. The supplier label matters less than whether another authorised person can inspect, deploy, recover and continue the product.

Decision criteria

Use the same questions for every option before choosing.