Project and Release Planung:

Release Rules

We effectively have two hard gates every month:

• Gate A (1st of the month): Consumption data must be imported cleanly and validated.

• Gate B (7th of the month): Billing/subscriptions/invoice run must complete reliably.

This means a “billing-safe” release must be in production before the 1st if it changes import/mapping — or at the latest before the 7th if it only affects billing logic.

Rule: “We deploy to production only if it does not risk the upcoming 1st/7th billing cycle.”

Default approach: Deploy 2–4 days before the 1st, then only hotfixes.

Hotfix window: From the 1st to the 7th, fixes only, no new features.

Phases: 

Phase 1: Build (from the 8th to ~20th)

• Develop new features for the next billing cycl
  

Phase 2: Stabilization (approx. 21st to end of month)

• Bug fixing, performance improvements

• “No new features” except small, low-risk changes

Phase 3: Release Freeze + Cutover (last 3–5 days before the 1st)

• Finalize migrations
  

Phase 4: Operational Monitoring (1st–7th)

• Monitor the import on the 1st (logs, counts)
  

• Monitor the invoice run on the 7th