Feature Launch Checklist: Before Pressing Publish

Feature launches fail quietly — not because the feature is bad, but because the announcement was disorganized. One forgotten channel, one broken link, one missing asset, and your launch reaches half the audience at half the impact. Use this checklist.

Video assets (T-minus 3 days)

• ☐ Hero video (30-60s) — for your website, YouTube, and email
• ☐ Social cut (15-30s, 1:1 aspect ratio) — for Twitter/LinkedIn
• ☐ GIF preview (5-10s, under 5MB) — for changelogs, Slack announcements
• ☐ Thumbnail image (1280×720) — for YouTube and email previews
• ☐ All videos have captions/subtitles burned in
• ☐ Videos tested on mobile (text readable at phone viewing size)

Messaging alignment (T-minus 2 days)

• ☐ One-sentence feature description agreed upon (used everywhere)
• ☐ Primary use case identified (the one story the video tells)
• ☐ Feature name finalized (don't change it after launch)
• ☐ Help documentation written and reviewed
• ☐ FAQ prepared for top 3-5 predicted questions
• ☐ Internal team briefed (support, sales, CS all know what's launching)

Channel preparation (T-minus 1 day)

• ☐ Email draft written, scheduled, and tested (subject line, preview text, video thumbnail)
• ☐ Social posts drafted for each platform (Twitter, LinkedIn minimum)
• ☐ Blog post or changelog entry written
• ☐ In-app announcement configured (modal, banner, or tooltip)
• ☐ Landing page or feature page updated
• ☐ All links tested (video embed, CTA buttons, doc links)

Technical QA (T-minus 1 day)

• ☐ Feature is live and stable in production (not just staging)
• ☐ Feature flag is enabled for all users (or targeted segment)
• ☐ Demo account has the feature configured and looking good
• ☐ Video shows the current UI exactly (no outdated screenshots from development)
• ☐ No known bugs that would confuse new users
• ☐ Performance is acceptable under expected load increase

Analytics setup (T-minus 1 day)

• ☐ Feature usage event tracking is live and verified
• ☐ Conversion funnel defined (saw announcement → visited feature → used feature)
• ☐ Video engagement tracking configured (views, completion rate, click-through)
• ☐ Baseline metrics captured (usage before launch for comparison)
• ☐ Dashboard or report ready for day-1 monitoring

Launch day sequence

1. Morning: Final check — feature working, video playing, links valid
2. T+0: Publish changelog/blog post (SEO indexing starts)
3. T+30min: Send email to users
4. T+1hr: Publish social media posts
5. T+1hr: Enable in-app announcement
6. T+2hr: Monitor analytics and support queue
7. T+24hr: First performance review — how did it land?

Rollback plan

If something goes wrong, can you:

• ☐ Disable the in-app announcement quickly?
• ☐ Stop the email send (if scheduled but not sent)?
• ☐ Update or remove social posts?
• ☐ Disable the feature via feature flag without a deploy?
• ☐ Redirect the feature page to a "coming soon" state?

You probably won't need this. But the one time you do, you'll be glad you thought about it at 10am, not at 3am during an incident.

Post-launch (T+1 week)

• ☐ Review video engagement metrics (where do viewers drop off?)
• ☐ Review feature adoption metrics (is it working?)
• ☐ Update video if UI changed since recording
• ☐ Collect and share wins internally (user quotes, metrics)