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 —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