How will I know if it works OR deploying isn’t the end

I used to be very keen on asking “Is it live?” anytime someone would say something is done. That was my definition of done, in front of customers with them using it.

But now I want to know not that its done but also that its working. Deploying feels great and like a lovely bookend to your work but we really need to make sure its doing the thing we expect it to do.

This can be done in user tracking like Google Analytics or Snowplow but it can also be much simpler. Maybe you can add some logs to the expected journey and to pick up if it follows an unexpected path. Maybe you’ve got honeycomb and can track requests in depth. Maybe you can pull some database values which will verify your behaviour. Maybe you can watch some Hotjar recordings.

Now before I deploy things I try to remember to think about “How will I know if it works?” and “How will I know if it breaks?” and creating a way of being able to answer both those questions.