Name the next acceptance decision
Every release passes through several decisions: deployed to production, accepted by the business, opened to a first customer, rolled out broadly. Treat each one separately, with its own criteria and approver, rather than assuming one implies the next.
Identify the critical workflows
List the handful of end-to-end workflows that would cause real harm if they failed. Those paths get the deepest testing and the clearest evidence. Screens that are easy to test are not necessarily the ones that matter.
Make unresolved defects visible
A release decision should be made with the open defect list in view, each item with a severity, an owner and a decision: fix now, fix later or accept. Hidden or informal defect tracking turns release meetings into guesswork.
Confirm monitoring and rollback owners
Before widening access, confirm who watches the system, what they watch, and who can roll back. A rollback plan nobody has rehearsed is a hope, not a plan.
Package the evidence
A short release-readiness pack (scope, test results, open issues, known risks, monitoring and rollback owners) lets stakeholders make the decision quickly and leaves a record of why it was made.