How to create a quality process before and after each deploy

Executive brief

Key takeaways

• Automate tests for vital routes.
• Lab metrics prevent incidents in staging.
• Field data monitors the real impact in production.

Deploys introduce new features but frequently break vital rules for discovery and conversion. This playbook defines what to observe in your engineering flow.

The problem of silent regression

When changing interface components, it's common for engineers to accidentally remove tracking tags or harm the INP metric by introducing third-party scripts. Without a process, this turns into revenue loss.

Step 1: Before Deploy (Pre-flight)

The "before" phase depends on staging environments and continuous integration (CI) pipelines.

• E2E Tests (End-to-End): Ensure critical flows (login, add to cart) work.
• Lab Validation: Audit newly changed URLs with Lighthouse in CI to detect gross regressions in LCP or main thread blocking.
• Traceability: Verify that fundamental SEO meta tags (title, canonical) remain intact in the server-rendered HTML.

Limitation: The lab does not simulate real-world slow connections perfectly.

Step 2: After Deploy (Post-flight)

Monitoring now observes the behavior of systems under load and real users.

• Production Health Checks: Monitor logs to confirm there wasn't a jump in 500 responses on essential routes.
• Field Data (CrUX/RUM): Quickly identify if INP or LCP suffered regression in the first two days of a new release.

Recommended action

Create a blocking approval checklist (gatekeeper) in your repository. To automate this visual and structural layer without maintenance overhead, use Remountly's defensive coverage directly in your pipeline.

Direct answers

Frequently asked questions

Why test again after deploy?

Because the production environment has unpredictable variables (cache, CDNs, real traffic) that do not exist in staging.