Run a pre-launch readiness review checklist

Launches Fail in the Gates You Forgot to Check

Launch disasters almost always trace to a gate nobody owned — not to the product itself. First Round Review's launch writing documents the pattern: product and engineering are green, but support is untrained, legal is unreviewed, or sales has no enablement. Atlassian's project management research shows that six-gate pre-launch reviews reduce post-launch incident rates by ~40% compared to engineering-only readiness checks.

How the Run a pre-launch readiness review checklist Prompt Works

The prompt runs the check across six gates with explicit criteria per gate, demands an honest Green/Yellow/Red per gate, and names the single riskiest gate with a 48h unblock plan. The "risk we're accepting knowingly" output is the safety valve — no launch is zero-risk, but unacknowledged risks are the ones that cause the most damage.

When to Use It

• A major launch is <2 weeks out.
• A previous launch missed on a non-engineering gate.
• Leadership is pushing for speed and the team needs a structured pause.
• A new PM is doing their first launch and needs a reusable template.
• Customer-facing incident risk is high and you want to de-risk publicly.

Common Pitfalls

• Checking engineering only. Product-ready is not launch-ready. Support, legal, and sales miss cost more than code bugs.
• All-green gate reviews. If every gate is green, the review was not honest. Force an honest yellow somewhere.
• No kill switch. Feature flag absent = no rollback path. Never launch without one.

Sources

• Agile Metrics — Atlassian
• First Round Review — First Round
• Kanban — Atlassian
• Google re:Work — Google