Creating a Production Launch Plan

In this book, we describe the components of a launch plan at Google and offer practical methods you might apply to reduce production launch risks for your own products. We include lessons we have learned about what works well for launching Google products, including large products, new features for existing products, and even small products. The lessons we describe are adaptable for consumer-oriented services regardless of company size or a product's user base. How much control you have over the product's architecture, source code, and operational tuning affects how adaptable you may find these practices. Those with enterprise-oriented services should find most of this advice relevant, though your implementation may differ.

We hope that after reading this book you will share our opinion that launch planning isn't optional. You know your situation best. We encourage you to choose the practices that are most relevant to you and adapt them to your circumstances.