Reference
Score each dimension based on the amount of organisational work it creates. If you're unsure, choose the higher score. Labels reflect your current settings. change them in Settings.
| Score | Label | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | None | No meaningful impact or action required. |
| 1 | Low | Minor or routine impact that can be handled through normal release activity. |
| 2 | Medium | Noticeable change that requires coordination, enablement, communication, or readiness work. |
| 3 | High | Significant change, risk, migration, rollout complexity, or business impact. |
Use these boundaries to avoid double-scoring the same work.
| Dimension | Score here when the release affects… |
|---|---|
| Customer workflow | Changes to how customers use the product, including workflows, behaviour changes, relearning, deprecations, or potential confusion. |
| Customer trust risk | Risk that customers feel worse about the product or company because of this change, even if it is technically simple to build. Score separately from implementation effort, communication, or enablement work. |
| Data & migration Critical | Changes to customer data, migration, restoring a customer's previous data state, downtime, data protection, or customer action required to complete the migration. Excludes feature or code rollback. See Delivery risk. |
| Implementation complexity Critical | Configuration, integrations, customer-specific setup, services work, or specialist involvement required to deliver the release. Excludes the data migration itself. See Data & migration. |
| Customer awareness | Communication required to make customers aware of what is changing and why: advance notice, service interruption, workflow changes, action required, migration notifications, or implementation guidance. |
| Customer enablement | Information or training customers need to understand and use the release: documentation, knowledge base content, training, demos, webinars, onboarding, or education. |
| Customer success & adoption | Work required to support customer adoption and rollout: rollout planning, proactive outreach, adoption tracking, customer health monitoring, or playbooks. |
| Support readiness Internal readiness | Work required to prepare support teams for the release: troubleshooting new issues, expected ticket volume, escalation paths, and known-issue documentation. Excludes internal team handoffs and process. See Operational handoffs. |
| Commercial impact | Changes to pricing, packaging, licensing, billing, contracts, entitlements, revenue, sales process, or monetisation. |
| Market activation | Market-facing activity required to launch or promote the release: messaging, website, campaigns, content, webinars, social, PR, analyst, partner communications, sales campaigns, or demand generation. |
| Operational handoffs Internal readiness | How work moves internally for the release, including team responsibilities, handoffs, governance, or internal process changes. Excludes Support's capacity to handle customer-facing tickets. See Support readiness. |
| Delivery risk CriticalInternal readiness | Technical or release risk if something goes wrong, including rollback capability, business interruption, or mitigation needs. Excludes data restore capability. See Data & migration. |
Use Market activation for activity that launches or promotes the release. Score customer notices under Customer awareness, and documentation or training under Customer enablement.
| Score | Level | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | None | No market activity required. |
| 1 | Inform | Product Marketing awareness or light commercial positioning. |
| 2 | Enable | Sales campaign support, launch messaging, commercial enablement, product webinar, or coordinated Product Marketing activity. |
| 3 | Launch | Website updates, campaigns, content, social, PR, events, analyst briefings, partner communications, sales campaigns, or demand generation. |
Optional dimensions don't count toward the Impact score or change the Release pathway. Score them when they create meaningful work for the release; otherwise leave them at 0. A score of 3 surfaces an advisory note in your results but does not change the pathway.
| Dimension | Score here when the release affects… |
|---|---|
| Integration detail | Use when integrations, APIs, webhooks, middleware, partners, or re-authentication are a significant source of effort. Implementation complexity already captures general integration work, so this is a drill-down rather than a substitute. |
| Security & compliance readiness | Security review, data protection or privacy obligations, or industry-specific compliance requirements triggered by the release. |
| Partner / reseller enablement | Use when partners, resellers, or system integrators are involved in selling or delivering the release. Covers partner training, sales materials, certification changes, or channel communication. |
| Localisation | Use when the release spans multiple regions or languages. Covers translation, region-specific content or compliance, currency or formatting changes, or staggered regional rollout. |
| Pathway | Use when | Typical activity |
|---|---|---|
| Standard release | Low impact with no critical dimension ≥ 2. | Routine operational notice or release notes, standard monitoring. |
| Coordinated release | Medium impact with no critical dimension = 3. | Customer communication, customer enablement, support and customer success readiness, Product Marketing review if market activation is needed. |
| Managed release | High impact or any critical dimension = 3. | Migration and implementation planning, specialist review, feature flags, phased rollout, structured change management. |
| Strategic launch | Very high impact, high market activation, major commercial impact with other material impacts, or multiple critical dimensions scored High at once (if enabled under Settings). | Cross-functional programme with leadership visibility, Product Marketing, broader Marketing activation, commercial enablement, and adoption tracking. |
Change management level reflects breadth, not severity: how many dimensions require real coordination (scored Medium or High), rather than how severe any single dimension is. A release can be narrow but deep, or broad but shallow, and those require different types of coordination even at a similar overall Impact score.
| Level | Label | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contained | 0 to 3 of the 12 core dimensions are scored Medium or High. |
| 2 | Moderate | 4 to 6 of the 12 core dimensions are scored Medium or High. |
| 3 | Broad | 7 to 9 of the 12 core dimensions are scored Medium or High. |
| 4 | Extensive | 10 to 12 of the 12 core dimensions are scored Medium or High. |