Release and Launch Checklists

The Situation

A product release has 30 to 60 steps across engineering, QA, docs, and marketing. The release manager keeps them in a sheet, then re-types them into Jira for each release.

The Approach

1. Keep a master release checklist in a sheet with columns for Summary, Assignee, Due Date, and Labels.
2. Create the release story in Jira.
3. Import the sheet under the story.
4. Use a saved template named "Release Checklist".

Result

Each step becomes a subtask with an owner and a date. The story shows progress as subtasks close. The sheet stays as the master; Jira holds the live status.

Tips

• Use labels such as docs, qa, and marketing to filter by team.
• Set due dates as offsets from the release date in the sheet before you import.