Operational readiness
The launch and support standards Acme applies before a system or contract is considered production-ready.
A system is production-ready when another team can understand ownership, dependencies and failure behavior from the catalog before an incident starts.
Required catalog coverage
Before production launch, each system must document:
- owning team and escalation path,
- services and containers,
- commands, queries and events,
- critical flows that include the system,
- external dependencies,
- operational dashboards or runbooks where available,
- known failure modes and recovery expectations.
Critical system map
Checkout is the reference standard for operational coverage because it crosses Shopping, Ordering, Payments and Fulfilment.
Launch gates
| Gate | Required evidence |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Team and escalation path are present in the catalog. |
| Contracts | Public commands, events and queries have schemas or payload notes. |
| Observability | Error, latency and throughput signals exist for customer-facing paths. |
| Recovery | Retry, compensation or manual recovery behavior is documented. |
| Dependencies | Upstream and downstream systems are linked in the catalog. |
Review this system for production readiness at Acme Inc. Check ownership, escalation, contracts, observability,
dependency mapping, failure modes, recovery behavior and customer impact. Return launch blockers, follow-up tasks and
catalog pages that should be updated before release.Review this system for production readiness at Acme Inc. Check ownership, escalation, contracts, observability, dependency mapping, failure modes, recovery behavior and customer impact. Return launch blockers, follow-up tasks and catalog pages that should be updated before release.
Incident updates
After an incident, update the catalog when the incident reveals a missing dependency, stale owner, unclear contract, undocumented failure mode or misleading flow.