What is in a cutover plan besides the steps, and what would you rehearse?
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What is being tested
Whether you plan the decisions and the reversal, not just the sequence.
What is in it besides the steps
Go/no-go criteria, defined in advance. "If data verification has not passed by 04:00, we roll back."
Decided in advance this is a straightforward check. Decided at 04:00 with a tired team and a sunk cost, it is an argument that usually resolves toward pressing on — which is how cutovers become incidents.
The point of no return, named explicitly, so everyone knows when rollback stops being available.
A rollback procedure for every step before that point — tested, not described.
Verification steps after each stage, and who performs them.
A named decision-maker, available, with authority to abort. Without one, an abort waits forty minutes while someone is found.
Communication — who is told what and when, including support and customers.
Timings per step, from the rehearsal, with substantial contingency. Cutovers overrun.
What to rehearse
The whole thing, on production-like data, including the rollback.
A rehearsed cutover takes half the time and produces a fraction of the surprises. It reliably finds:
- A step that takes four hours rather than one.
- A permission nobody has.
- A dependency that must be stopped first.
- A verification that cannot actually be performed in the window.
- A rollback that does not work.
None of those are discoverable by reading the plan.
Reducing the need for a cutover at all
The best cutover is a small one. Gradual traffic shifting behind a flag, phased by segment, with instant revert, converts a high-stakes event into a series of low-stakes ones.
Reserve the big-bang for cases where phasing is genuinely impossible — and check that claim, because it is frequently a preference rather than a constraint.