Release Testing Workflow

中文版： 见技能 release-testing-workflow。

End-to-end release testing (1–2 weeks before release through post-release). Prompts: see reference.md and this directory's prompts/.

When to Use

User mentions release testing, Go/No-Go, or release readiness
Need timeline: T-14 planning → T-7 feature freeze → T-5–T-4 specialized testing → T-3 RC → T-2 quality assessment → T-1 Go/No-Go → T-day release → T+1–T+7 post-release
Trigger: e.g. “How do we schedule pre-release testing?” or “Go/No-Go checklist”

How to Use

Check reference.md to find the prompt file for the current step.
Open the corresponding file in prompts/, then combine it with the current context (scope, environment, risks, constraints).
Run step by step, and update priorities or gates based on outputs and blockers.

Common Pitfalls

❌ Adding features after T-7 → ✅ Feature freeze: only defect fixes; non-critical code freeze
❌ Releasing without Go/No-Go → ✅ Release only after gates pass, team alignment, and rollback readiness
❌ No post-release monitoring → ✅ T+1 intensive monitoring and fast response; follow incident procedures

Best Practices

T-14: use test strategy and requirements prompts for release plan and risk assessment
T-2: use test reporting and test strategy for quality gates and known-issue assessment
Before deploy: confirm rollback tested, communication plan and support brief ready
Principle: When in doubt, delay release.

Reference Files

reference.md — Step-to-prompt file mapping
prompts/ — English prompt files for this workflow (open the matching .md per step and use with context)

Related: daily-testing-workflow-en, sprint-testing-workflow-en.

T-14: Release Planning

☑️ Planning Meeting Checklist

Meeting preparation
- Confirm participants (Product, Engineering, QA, DevOps)
- Prepare meeting agenda
- Use prompts: test-strategy, requirements-analysis
Meeting agenda execution
- Define release scope
- Identify high-risk features
- Define quality gates
- Develop test strategy

☑️ Deliverables Completion Checklist

T-10 to T-8: Test Preparation

☑️ Environment Preparation Checklist

Test environment setup
- Set up pre-production environment
- Prepare production-like data
- Configure monitoring and logging
- Create test accounts
- Use prompts: automation-testing, test-strategy

☑️ Test Suite Update Checklist

☑️ Readiness Verification Checklist

T-7: Feature Freeze & Testing Acceleration

☑️ Feature Freeze Rules Confirmation

Freeze rules enforcement
- Confirm no new features added
- Only allow defect fixes
- Non-critical code freeze

☑️ Functional Testing Checklist

☑️ Regression Testing Checklist

Full regression execution
- Execute full automated regression
- Execute critical path manual tests
- Cross-browser testing
- Mobile testing
- Use prompts: functional-testing, ai-assisted-testing

☑️ End-to-End Testing Checklist

T-5 to T-4: Specialized Testing

☑️ Performance Testing Checklist

☑️ Security Testing Checklist

☑️ Accessibility Testing Checklist

☑️ Visual Testing Checklist

T-3: Release Candidate (RC) Testing

☑️ RC Deployment Checklist

Release candidate preparation
- Deploy RC to pre-production
- Code freeze
- Tag version

☑️ Smoke Testing Checklist

Quick smoke test (1–2 hours)
- Test critical features
- Confirm no critical defects
- Verify deployment success

☑️ Final Regression Checklist

Full regression execution
- Execute full automated regression
- Execute manual critical path tests
- Execute exploratory testing
- Use prompts: manual-testing

☑️ Defect Triage Checklist

Defect handling decisions
- Critical defects: must fix → retest → new RC
- High priority: assess risk
- Medium/low priority: move to next version

T-2: Quality Assessment

☑️ Quality Metrics Review Checklist

☑️ Quality Gate Check Checklist

☑️ Risk Assessment Checklist

T-1: Go/No-Go

☑️ Go/No-Go Meeting Checklist

☑️ GO Decision Criteria Check

☑️ NO-GO Risk Identification

☑️ Pre-Release Checklist

T-Day: Release Day

☑️ Pre-Deployment Checklist (2–4 hours before)

☑️ During Deployment Monitoring Checklist

☑️ Post-Deployment Verification Checklist (30–60 min)

☑️ First 24 Hours Monitoring Checklist

☑️ Rollback Conditions Check

Rollback trigger conditions
- Is critical functionality broken
- Is there severe performance degradation
- Is there data corruption
- Are there security vulnerabilities

T+1 to T+7: Post-Release

☑️ Day 1 Checklist

☑️ Week 1 Checklist

☑️ Release Retrospective Checklist

Target Audience

QA engineers and developers executing this testing domain in real projects
Team leads who need structured, reproducible testing outputs
AI users who need fast, format-ready deliverables for execution and reporting

Not Recommended For

Pure production incident response without test scope/context
Decisions requiring legal/compliance sign-off without expert review
Requests lacking minimum inputs (scope, environment, expected behavior)

Critical Success Factors

Provide clear scope, environment, and acceptance criteria before generation
Validate generated outputs against real system constraints before execution
Keep artifacts traceable (requirements -> test points -> defects -> decisions)

Output Templates and Parsing Scripts

Template directory: output-templates/
- template-word.md (Word-friendly structure)
- template-excel.tsv (Excel paste-ready)
- template-xmind.md (XMind-friendly outline)
- template-json.json
- template-csv.csv
- template-markdown.md
Parser scripts directory: scripts/
- Parse (generic): parse_output_formats.py
- Parse (per-format): parse_word.py, parse_excel.py, parse_xmind.py, parse_json.py, parse_csv.py, parse_markdown.py
- Convert (generic): convert_output_formats.py
- Convert (per-format): convert_to_word.py, convert_to_excel.py, convert_to_xmind.py, convert_to_json.py, convert_to_csv.py, convert_to_markdown.py
- Batch convert: batch_convert_templates.py (outputs into artifacts/)

Examples:

python3 scripts/parse_json.py output-templates/template-json.json
python3 scripts/parse_markdown.py output-templates/template-markdown.md
python3 scripts/convert_to_json.py output-templates/template-markdown.md
python3 scripts/convert_output_formats.py output-templates/template-json.json --to csv
python3 scripts/batch_convert_templates.py --skip-same

release-testing-workflow-en