Start with the failures your release process needs to catch. A missing environment variable, an incompatible database change, or a broken sign-in flow each needs a check at the right point in delivery.
Prioritize checks that catch real failure modes: build integrity, critical path tests, and environment configuration drift.
Staging needs to exercise identity, networking, and representative data. Record any differences from production so a passing staging check is interpreted correctly.
Rehearse the recovery procedure. Confirm that the previous version can still read the database and process queued work before relying on a rollback.
