Release readiness and sign-off
Know exactly what is being released, what is still open, and who accepted it.
Dockbase is the governance layer around your releases. It holds the scope, the delivery conditions, the open risks, the decisions, and the sign-offs in one place, then preserves the finalized release as a permanent record. Your tickets and your pipeline stay exactly where they are.
$49 per month or $490 per year for the whole workspace. Unlimited members, unlimited releases. See pricing.
Release · REL-2417
Checkout 3.2
Readiness
2 items need attention
Scope
Delivery conditions
- Regression suite passed on release candidate
- Data migration rehearsed on staging
- Android store review still open
Sign-offs
2 of 3
Finalization stays locked until the open condition and the last sign-off are resolved.
The problem
Release coordination lives in six places and survives in none of them.
Scope sits in tickets. Conditions sit in a spreadsheet. Risks are agreed on a call. Approval happens in a chat thread. A month later, when someone asks what was actually shipped and who accepted the trade-off, the answer has to be rebuilt from memory.
Scope agreed in a call
Scope recorded per product, area, module and release unit
Conditions tracked in a spreadsheet
Delivery conditions attached to the release and its scope
Approval given in a chat message
Sign-offs attributed by name, role and timestamp
History reconstructed months later
A finalized, read-only release record
One lifecycle
Prepare, verify, decide, approve, finalize, preserve.
Not six tools and not six meetings. One release moving through one flow, where each stage leaves behind the record the next stage needs.
- 01
Prepare
Start from a preset, a previous release, or an existing product. Scope is inherited, not retyped.
- 02
Verify
Delivery conditions and open risks surface as attention items, not as a checklist someone maintains by hand.
- 03
Decide
Record the decisions that matter: accepted risks, waived conditions, known limitations, with the person behind each one.
- 04
Approve
Request sign-offs by role. Each one is attributed and timestamped when it arrives.
- 05
Finalize
Finalization is gated on what is still open, so the record only closes when the release is genuinely accepted.
- 06
Preserve
The finalized release becomes a read-only record: scope, conditions, risks, decisions, evidence, and approvals.
Dockbase operates at the commitment boundary, where "we think this is ready" becomes "we accept this release." It is not a task manager, ticket tracker, sprint tool, or CI/CD pipeline. It sits beside your existing delivery tools and protects the decision that follows them.
Preparation
The second release is faster than the first. So is the tenth.
Most of a release looks like the last one. Dockbase treats that as the default: your product structure, scope, and conditions carry forward, and you only spend attention on what actually changed.
Start from a preset
Release presets carry the sections, conditions, and decision prompts your team already agreed on.
Repeat a previous release
Reuse the structure of the last release, with the version incremented for you.
Inherit product scope
Products, platforms, areas, and modules are defined once and reused by every release that touches them.
Review only what changed
A structural difference against the previous release shows what was added, removed, or moved.
Start a new release from
Release preset
SaaS, client delivery, mobile, hotfix, regulated, product launch
Previous release
Checkout 3.1 · finalized 14 days ago
Existing product
Scope inherited from areas and modules
Blank release
Full manual control
Recurring releases stop being a blank page. Preparation becomes a review of differences rather than a rebuild.
Use cases
A one-module patch and a nine-system launch use the same record.
Small releases stay small. Coordinated releases split into release units, each with its own owner, date, and readiness, inside a single decision.
Simple
Single product patch
One product, one module, two conditions, one sign-off. Prepared in a few minutes and finalized the same day.
Coordinated
Multi-unit launch
Web, iOS, Android, backend, API, CMS, and infrastructure move at different speeds. Each unit reports its own readiness; the release finalizes once.
What you keep
Operational memory, not paperwork.
Decisions and sign-offs are captured where they happen, in a line or two. What they buy you shows up later, when someone needs to know why a release went out the way it did.
Decision record
Accepted risk
Android rollout starts one day later pending store review.
Delivery lead
Waived condition
Load test deferred: traffic profile unchanged from 3.1.
Engineering lead
Known limitation
Legacy coupon codes remain read-only this release.
Product owner
The finalized record
Finalization freezes the release: the scope as it stood, the conditions met and waived, the risks accepted, the evidence linked, and every sign-off with its author and timestamp. It is read-only, shareable, and exportable.
Who it serves
Product, engineering, delivery, and QA leads prepare and approve. Clients, sponsors, and auditors read a clean summary without being given access to the machinery behind it.
Where it sits
It does not compete with the tools you already run.
- Task tools
- manage the work.
- CI/CD pipelines
- deploy the software.
- Documentation tools
- store information.
- Dockbase
- holds the governance around the release itself: scope, conditions, risks, decisions, approvals, and the record that outlives them.
Assistance, kept in its place
Dockbase can suggest the conditions a release like this usually carries, summarize what is blocking finalization, highlight differences from the previous release, and draft a release summary. Every suggestion is editable and optional.
It never approves a release, accepts a risk, or signs off on behalf of a person. Accountability stays with named people.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
The questions release governance teams ask before adopting Dockbase.
What is the difference between release governance and release management?
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Release management coordinates the work of getting a release out: scheduling, dependencies, and execution. Release governance records the formal decision to ship: who approved it, under what conditions, and what risks were accepted. Dockbase is a governance tool, not a management tool.
How is Dockbase different from Jira release versions?
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Jira tracks the tickets included in a release. Dockbase records the governance decision around the release: the decision owner, the conditions accepted, the accepted risks, the attributed sign-off, and the immutable record. The two are complementary.
Can Dockbase replace our release approval spreadsheet?
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Yes. A release approval spreadsheet has no attribution, no immutability, and no audit trail. Dockbase provides structured release records with named decision owners, attributed sign-offs, and a permanent governance archive.
Do you support a release sign-off workflow with multiple approvers?
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Yes. A release can collect multiple sign-offs, each attributed by name, role, and timestamp. Workspace roles control who has authority to finalize a release.
Is the governance record immutable after sign-off?
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Yes. Once a release is finalized, the record becomes an immutable governance artefact. Subsequent changes are tracked in the audit trail, not by overwriting the original record.
Does Dockbase integrate with our deployment pipeline?
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Dockbase is intentionally separate from CI/CD. The governance decision precedes deployment. Deployment automation should reference the release record, not depend on it for orchestration.
Is Dockbase suitable for regulated industries with audit requirements?
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Dockbase produces structured, attributed, immutable release records with a complete governance audit trail. The export format is portable for handover to internal audit, compliance teams, or external regulators.
How long does it take to set up release governance with Dockbase?
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A workspace can be configured in under 30 minutes: define your products, platforms, areas, and modules, then register your first release. Your team can start recording decisions on the same day.
Pricing
One price for the workspace. No per-seat maths.
Unlimited members, unlimited products, unlimited releases, and the complete governance record. Finalized releases stay readable and exportable even if you stop subscribing.
Monthly
Billed monthly. Cancel anytime.
Yearly
$40.83 per month, billed annually.
- Unlimited members, products and releases
- Decision entries, risks and delivery conditions
- Attributed sign-offs and readiness gating
- Immutable finalized records with export