checklist · first 48 hours watch agenda

First 48 hours watch · agenda

Read at flag-flip. Re-read every 4 hours through the watch. The discipline: dashboards over tickets, noting over acting, three roles over one.

TIP

The first hour's noise is the change being noticed, not the change being broken. The watch's main act is restraint.

At flag-flip (H+0)

[ ] Three roles at dashboards (not tickets). PO + TL + on-call. If a role is missing, name a backup. because: one role watching alone produces thin notes — Practice · Evidence
[ ] All three watching the same dashboard panels. The panels named in the Technical Design Brief.
[ ] The release brief is sent. Client has the release brief. CS Tier-1 has the handoff note.

Hour 1 (H+0 → H+1)

[ ] Note, do not act. Time-stamp every observation. Do not page. Do not roll back. because: teams that acted in H+1 rolled back working changes 1.4× more often — Practice · Step 3
[ ] Spikes that match expectations are noise. Increased queue.opened when the flag enables a cohort is expected noise.

Hour 2 (H+2)

[ ] 15-minute walk-through with the three roles. Walk the notes. Classify each: noise · signal · action now. because: first-contact noise vs signal is the watch's main discrimination — Practice · Step 4
[ ] Each signal has an owner and an investigation deadline.

Hours 3–8

[ ] Hourly notes. Even nothing has changed is a note worth taking — proves the watch was attentive.
[ ] Real incident? Hand off to incident response.because: the watch ends explicitly when an incident begins — Canon · Incidents

Hours 8–24

[ ] 4-hourly notes.
[ ] Cohort rollout proceeding per the release brief.

Hours 24–48

[ ] 6-hourly notes.
[ ] PO is comparing dashboards against the prediction's check method.because: the watch is the rehearsal for the signal reading — Practice · First 48h watch

At hour 48 — close

[ ] Write the one-page closing note. Summary · noise · signals followed up · what feeds the next cycle. Linked from the signal reading and the next model update.
[ ] Hand-off to PO for the signal reading on the check date.

If at hour 48 the team feels they need to keep watching, that is a named decision with an end date. Watching indefinitely is the failure mode.

See also

Practice — First 48 hours watch · Release gate
Canon — After We Build · The First 48 Hours
Template — Runbook