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name: production-readiness description: >- Define risk-scaled evidence packets and go/no-go/defer/exception launch gates with accountable owners. Do not use this skill for cross-domain production composition; use production-excellence for assembling migration, recovery, capacity, and incident evidence. license: MIT compatibility: Platform-agnostic methodology. No runtime dependency. metadata: tags: production-readiness, launch-decision, evidence-packet, risk-scaled, go-no-go, readiness-review, production-evidence, cross-domain, launch-review

Production Readiness

Assemble cross-domain evidence into a launch decision. This skill defines the minimum production evidence packet by risk class, maps every evidence category to a named source or an explicit missing-evidence outcome, and produces one of four launch decisions with an accountable owner. It does not duplicate release checklists, does not produce a universal risk score, and routes detailed checks to the existing specialist skills.

When to load this

Load when any of these triggers matches:

• A service, feature, or change is approaching a launch decision and needs a production-readiness review.
• Evidence from multiple domains (ownership, SLOs, security, data, support, cost, observability) must be assembled into one reviewable record.
• A launch review board, readiness gate, or accountable owner needs a structured go / no-go / defer / exception recommendation.
• A migration-dependent release needs evidence that every dependency is ready.
• A low-risk documentation-only change needs proportional (not full-scale) readiness review.

When not to use

• Release pipeline mechanics — promotion, canary stages, CI/CD gate configuration, versioning, and artifact management. Route to release-engineering. Release-engineering owns the pipeline gate; production-readiness owns the cross-domain evidence assembly and launch decision.
• Incident response, SLO operations, on-call, and reliability engineering. Route to site-reliability-engineering. SRE owns the live-service health boundary; production-readiness owns the pre-launch readiness boundary.
• Security implementation, threat modeling, or penetration testing. Route to secure-software-engineering or security-audit-methodology.
• Data pipeline operations, schema migration engineering, or ETL/ELT design. Route to data-engineering.
• Test strategy, regression planning, and quality gates. Route to qa-methodology.
• Platform infrastructure provisioning or IDP design. Route to platform-engineering.
• Implementation planning, work breakdown, or delivery coordination. Route to implementation-planning.
• Spec authoring and SDD gate mechanics. Route to spec-driven-development.
• Verification verdicts against explicit criteria. Route to verification-methodology.
• API contract design and versioning policy. Route to api-design-and-evolution.
• Statistical analysis, experimental design, or causal inference. Route to data-scientist.
• End-to-end production lifecycle orchestration across all readiness dimensions. Route to the production-excellence bundle (prose reference only — not yet landed). Production-excellence composes production-readiness, migration-engineering, resilience-and-recovery, capacity-and-cost-engineering, and incident-learning into a full production-operations lifecycle.

Risk classes and evidence scaling

The readiness evidence packet scales by risk class. A low-risk documentation release must not demand the same evidence as a user-facing service launch.

Risk class	Trigger conditions	Required evidence categories	Review depth
Low	Docs-only change, README update, non-functional config comment, internal tool that affects ≤1 team, content-only website change with no backend	Ownership, user/business outcome (1-line statement), rollback (revert a commit)	Self-review; lightweight record
Standard	User-facing feature, internal service with >1 consumer team, API addition, data-schema additive change, performance improvement with no SLO change	All 11 categories (see checklist below); missing evidence requires explicit gap annotation with owner and date	Peer review; full readiness record
High	Customer-facing service launch, SLO-bearing change, auth/authz change, data migration with irreversibility, payment/billing path, compliance-scoped change, trust-boundary crossing	All 11 categories with evidence from a named source for every category; every gap requires a waiver with human approver	Formal review; exception requires human approval annotation distinct from automated checks

Risk class is determined by the highest-risk dimension present, not by averaging or scoring. If any single dimension (e.g. data migration irreversibility, trust-boundary crossing) qualifies as High, the entire review is High.

Production evidence checklist

The 11 evidence categories form the minimum production evidence packet. Every category must have either a named source artifact or an explicit missing-evidence outcome.

#	Evidence category	Source / evidence	Gap / missing
1	Ownership	source: team name, on-call rotation, escalation path, or service catalog entry	missing: "no owner identified — deferred to , due "
2	User/business outcome	source: success metric, OKR link, or product brief with measurable target	missing: "outcome not defined — deferred to product owner, due "
3	Dependencies	source: dependency map, health-check results, or upstream SLO status	missing: "dependency map incomplete — deferred to , due "
4	SLOs	source: SLO declaration, error-budget policy, or SLO dashboard link	missing: "SLOs not declared — deferred to SRE, due "
5	Observability	source: dashboard link, alert rules, log/monitoring coverage, or Golden Signals report	missing: "observability gap — deferred to , due "
6	Support	source: runbook, support playbook, escalation matrix, or support-handoff document	missing: "no runbook — deferred to , due "
7	Security	source: security review record, threat-model summary, or security-acceptance sign-off	missing: "security review not completed — deferred to security team, due "
8	Data	source: data-classification record, retention/deletion policy, backup/restore test evidence, or migration test result	missing: "data classification not available — deferred to data owner, due "
9	Rollback	source: rollback runbook with rehearsal log, or revert-plan with recovery-time estimate	missing: "no rollback plan — deferred to , due "
10	Capacity	source: capacity model, load-test report, quota/limit review, or cost projection	missing: "capacity model not built — deferred to , due "
11	Cost	source: cost estimate, budget approval, or cost-attribution record	missing: "cost estimate not available — deferred to finance owner, due "

Structured fields (mandatory)

These four categories must appear as structured fields (checklist markers, table rows, or labeled form fields) — never only narrative prose.

• Ownership — named owner or owning team with escalation path; recorded in the evidence checklist above.
• Rollback — rollback plan or recovery path with rehearsal evidence; recorded in the evidence checklist above.
• Support — runbook, support playbook, or handoff document; recorded in the evidence checklist above.
• Observability — dashboards, alert rules, monitoring coverage; recorded in the evidence checklist above.

Launch decision outcomes

Every readiness review produces exactly one of four outcomes. The accountable owner is recorded with the decision.

Outcome	Meaning	Required evidence	Accountable owner
Go	Approved — proceed to launch	All evidence categories for the risk class are satisfied with named sources; no unresolved gaps	Named launch approver (e.g., service owner, launch-review chair)
No-go	Blocked — do not launch	At least one blocking gap exists with a named missing-evidence entry; the gap is material to the risk class	Named launch approver
Defer	Postponed — re-review after conditions are met	Deferred gaps are recorded with owner and due date; the deferral reason is explicit	Named launch approver + gap owners
Exception	Approved with waiver — launch despite unresolved gap	The specific gap is named; a named human approver explicitly grants the exception; the exception annotation is distinct from automated checks and cannot be self-granted	Named human approver (distinct from the automated review)

The exception outcome requires an explicit human-approval annotation — a named individual who approves the waiver. This approval is distinct from any automated check result and must be recorded separately (e.g., in an escalation record or exception log). The exception cannot be self-granted by the submitter.

Workflow

1. Determine risk class. Map the change against the trigger-condition table above. Select Low, Standard, or High.
2. Collect evidence. For each of the 11 categories, record a named source or a gap with owner and due date. Use the readiness record template.
3. Assess completeness. Check that every category has an entry. A category with a gap annotation is complete for the purpose of the review — the gap is visible.
4. Produce a launch decision. Map the evidence against the risk-class requirements and produce one of: Go, No-go, Defer, Exception.
5. Record the decision. Commit the readiness record with the accountable owner and, for exceptions, the explicit human-approval annotation.

No universal risk score

This skill does not produce a universal risk score, aggregate risk rating, or total risk number. Each evidence dimension stands on its own and is assessed against the risk-class requirements individually. If individual dimensions are evaluated separately (e.g., a security dimension assessment or a data dimension assessment), the rationale for any weighting is stated explicitly in that dimension's evidence entry — there is no single number that summarizes readiness.

File map

Path	Loaded when
references/discovery-brief.md	Understanding the ownership boundaries with sibling production and engineering skills
references/readiness-record.md	Filling a readiness record template or reviewing a submitted record

Route-to table

When the need is...	Route to
Release promotion, canary stages, CI/CD gates, versioning	release-engineering
Live-service SLOs, incident response, on-call, error budgets	site-reliability-engineering
Security requirements, threat modeling, secure defaults	secure-software-engineering
Data pipelines, schema migration, ETL/ELT	data-engineering
Test strategy, regression planning, quality gates	qa-methodology
Platform infrastructure, IDP, service networking	platform-engineering
Work breakdown, dependency mapping, rollout sequencing	implementation-planning
Spec authoring, acceptance criteria, SDD phase gates	spec-driven-development
Verification verdicts against explicit criteria	verification-methodology
API contract design and versioning	api-design-and-evolution
Statistical analysis, experimental design	data-scientist
Full production-operations lifecycle	production-excellence bundle (prose reference — routes to a future bundle composing production-readiness, migration-engineering, resilience-and-recovery, capacity-and-cost-engineering, and incident-learning)