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