Change Risk & Rollback

Overview

Produce explicit risk and rollback analysis before deployment. Enumerate failure modes, assess impact, define rollback procedures, and establish Go/No-Go criteria.

REQUIRED: superpowers:verification-before-completion, superpowers:systematic-debugging

When to Use

• Planning release or deployment changes
• Requesting assessment of operational risk
• Discussing rollback procedures
• Planning infrastructure or configuration changes
• Preparing production deployment

Core Workflow

1. Identify change scope (component, dependencies, traffic, window)
2. Enumerate failure modes (minimum 3 with symptom, detection, impact, probability)
3. Rate each risk (impact x probability)
4. Define rollback procedure (detection, Go/No-Go criteria, execution steps, timeline)
5. List prerequisites (backups, monitoring, on-call, previous version)
6. Select deployment strategy (Blue-Green, Canary, Rolling, Big-Bang)
7. Define success criteria (measurable, time-bound)

See references/failure-modes.md, references/rollback-templates.md, and references/deployment-strategies.md for details.

Quick Reference

Red Flags - STOP

• "Deployment is straightforward"
• "Can roll back if needed"
• "No time for risk analysis"
• "Testing caught everything"
• "We'll figure it out if something breaks"

All mean: Apply skill before deployment or document explicit risk acceptance.

Rationalizations Table

Evidence Checklist

• Change scope documented (component, dependencies, traffic)
• Minimum 3 failure modes identified with detection criteria
• Risk rating for each failure mode
• Rollback procedure with timeline
• Go/No-Go criteria explicit and measurable
• Prerequisites checklist provided
• Deployment strategy selected with rationale
• Success criteria defined