While you deliver
Cutover Runbook Checker
Check a go-live runbook before the night it runs: steps in the right order, nobody in two places at once, a finish inside the outage window, and a rollback that still fits if the last go/no-go says no.
Open the runbook spreadsheet: one row per step, with a task, an owner, a duration and a planned start time, and the steps each depends on if you keep them. It is read inside your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Cutover runbook
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per step: a task, an owner, a duration in minutes, a planned start time and the steps it depends on. Mark go/no-go decisions, the point of no return and rollback steps in a type column, or in the task's own words.
The plan for the one night that has to go right
A cutover runbook is a project schedule compressed into hours: every step timed to the minute, every owner named, a window the business agreed to be without the system, and a way back if things go wrong. It is usually a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets do not check themselves. A step typed in for 23:30 that needs a load that finishes at 23:55 looks fine until 23:30 arrives.
What is checked
Steps planned to start before a step they depend on has finished. People named on two steps whose times overlap, at night, when there is nobody else to ask. Steps with no owner. The finish against the outage window, and how much of the window is left to absorb a step that runs long. Go/no-go decisions against the point of no return: a decision after that point is a sign-off, not a decision. And whether the runbook has a rollback at all.
The rollback test
The question that decides whether a bad night is survivable: if the last go/no-go before the point of no return says no, does the rollback finish before the window closes? The page times the rollback steps from the end of that decision and says how many minutes are left, or how many minutes the service would still be down after the window. If the answer is negative, the plan needs an earlier decision, a shorter rollback or a longer window, and the time to find that out is now.
The countdown plan
Every step in time order, with its clock time, its offset from the start of the window (T+2:30), its owner and its type, and the rollback steps timed from the last go/no-go, ready to download as a spreadsheet for the bridge call.
What this does not do
It does not decide whether to go or roll back: that is the go/no-go meeting’s decision, made on the evidence of the night. It checks the plan as written, not whether the steps are the right ones, and it cannot know a step’s duration is optimistic. It needs go/no-go decisions, the point of no return and rollback steps to be marked, in a type column or in the task’s own words, and says so when they are not.