- The feature or product is build-complete enough to date
- More than one team has to move on the same day
- You need a public or company-wide moment, not a silent flag flip
- You still need to validate with a limited cohort. Run a beta
- Nobody agrees what you are shipping. Write the PRD first
- It is a quiet bugfix with no customer message. Skip the ceremony
Steps
Comms and GTM are one job. Monitoring and the retro sit after launch day, not during it.
Plan the launch
What success looks like, who it is for, and what would make you slip the date. Align that before the checklist fills up.
Check readiness
Product, support, tracking, and legal on one shared list with owners. Dry-run a week out.
GTM and comms
Internal first, then customers. One message, many channels. Enable sales and support before the public post.
- Product
Launch Communication Plan
Create a comprehensive communication plan for product launches including announcements, channels, and messaging for different audiences.
launchcommunicationproduct-launch - Product
Product Messaging Framework
Create a comprehensive messaging framework for product launches.
messagingpositioningproduct-launch - Product
Go-to-Market Strategy
Create a comprehensive go-to-market plan for product launches.
go-to-marketproduct-launchstrategy
Launch day
Hour-by-hour runbook and a dashboard that already works. Tracking is not a launch-day task.
After launch
Watch the first days, triage, then write what worked. Mixed feedback plus metrics. Then the retro.
Frequently asked questions
We already ran a beta. Where do we start?
Readiness. Bring the go/no-go, known issues, and the cohort readout into the checklist. Do not rewrite the strategy. Do not rerun GTM from the beta doc.
How early should we start?
Four to six weeks for a major release. A week is only enough for a small flag flip and a Slack post.
It is a quiet bugfix. Do we still launch?
No. Skip this workflow. You need a date, more than one team, and a customer or company message. A silent flag is a ship, not a launch.