Launch Plan

Launch based on the size of the bet, not the size of your ambition. Most features deserve a silent or soft launch. Save the big-bang for genuinely new products or major pivots. Linear's principle: launch early, launch often, launch multiple times.

Launch Tiers

Tier 1: Silent Launch

Ship it, turn it on, see what happens. No announcement.

Use for: Bug fixes, minor improvements, internal tools, infrastructure changes, experiments.

Checklist:

• Feature is behind a flag or gradually rolled out
• Monitoring/alerting is in place
• Rollback plan exists
• One person is on point to watch metrics for 24 hours

Tier 2: Soft Launch

Ship it, tell existing users, collect feedback before going wide.

Use for: New features for existing users, significant UX changes, pricing changes, beta programs.

Checklist:

• Changelog entry or in-app notification written
• Help docs updated (or created)
• Support team briefed with FAQ
• Feedback collection mechanism in place (survey, feedback button, Slack channel)
• Known limitations documented
• Rollback plan exists
• 1-2 week feedback period before going wide

Example: Launching real-time collaboration — Changelog: "Edit together, see cursors live." Support FAQ covers latency expectations and max concurrent editors. Roll out to 20% of teams for 3 days via feature flag, then 100%. Rollback: disable WebSocket sync, fall back to polling. Feedback widget live for 2 weeks. Success metric: % of teams with 2+ simultaneous editors.

Tier 3: Big-Bang Launch

Coordinated, public, designed for maximum reach. Expensive in time and attention.

Use for: New product launch, major pivot, rebrand, entering a new market. Maximum 2-3 per year.

Checklist:

Product

• Feature complete and tested at scale
• Onboarding flow tested with 5+ new users
• Performance benchmarked under expected load

Content

• Landing page or product page live
• Blog post / announcement written
• Demo video or screenshots prepared
• Social posts drafted for launch day and day +1, +3, +7

Distribution

• Email to existing users scheduled
• Social media posts queued
• Community posts drafted (relevant subreddits, Slack groups, Discord)
• Product Hunt launch prepared (if applicable)
• Influencer/partner outreach done 1 week before

Support

• Support team briefed and staffed for launch day
• FAQ and known issues documented
• Escalation path defined

Measurement

• Success metrics defined before launch (not after)
• Analytics tracking verified
• Daily review scheduled for first week

Post-Launch

Regardless of tier:

1. Day 1: Watch metrics. Fix anything broken. Respond to all feedback.
2. Day 3: First retro — what's working, what's not, what surprised you.
3. Week 1: Decide whether to iterate, expand, or pull back.
4. Week 2-4: Write up learnings. Update the roadmap based on real data.

Guidelines

• CRITICAL: Default to Tier 1 or 2. Upgrade to Tier 3 only with strong justification. Over-launching creates announcement fatigue.
• NEVER launch without a rollback plan. If you can't revert, you're not ready.
• ALWAYS define success metrics BEFORE launch, not after. Post-hoc metrics are just storytelling.
• NEVER launch on a Friday. Launch Monday-Wednesday to have the week for monitoring and iteration.
• ALWAYS have one person on point for the first 24 hours. Launches without owners drift.
• NEVER do a big-bang launch for features with known bugs. Soft launch first, fix, then go wide.

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Built on Linear's "launch multiple times" philosophy. Skills from productskills.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: assimovt
• Source: assimovt/productskills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.