Go-live is not a moment. It is a decision. The moment you flip the switch from old system to new system is the moment a programme's success or failure becomes visible. Every decision made before that moment determines what happens after it. A steering committee that waits until the night before go-live to ask whether the organisation is ready has already lost the opportunity to do anything about it. The questions need to be asked early and answered repeatedly. When you can answer all seven of these questions with confidence, go-live is ready. When you cannot, it is not.
Is data migration complete and fully reconciled?
Data migration is the most underestimated risk on almost every transformation programme. A Dayforce implementation arrives with payroll history that must be balanced to the penny. An SAP S/4HANA migration carries master data from six legacy systems that need to be consolidated, cleansed, and validated. An AI implementation requires training datasets that are complete, accurate, and representative. In all cases, the question is not whether migration has started. The question is whether it has been completed and validated against source systems.
Ask for a data reconciliation report that compares record counts and key totals from the source system to the target system. Ask for evidence of exception handling. Ask how many data quality issues were found and whether they have been resolved or actively accepted by the business. Ask what tests were run post-migration to confirm the data is usable. If the steering committee cannot get a clear answer to any of these questions, data migration is not complete enough for go-live.
Have all critical defects been closed?
Testing surfaces defects. This is not a problem. It is the purpose of testing. The problem is pretending defects do not exist because acknowledging them would delay go-live. A steering committee that accepts a go-live with open defects is accepting a go-live that will fail.
Ask for a defect summary categorised by severity. Ask which defects are still open and why. Ask what the business impact is for each open defect. Ask whether the organisation will operate differently after go-live to work around the defect, or whether the defect will cause the organisation to fail to deliver the outcome that prompted the transformation in the first place. Ask whether the defect was tested and whether remediation has been tested. If the steering committee is comfortable accepting a defect, that is a governance decision. But it must be made with complete information about the consequence of that acceptance.
Is the user population trained and competent?
Training is not a one-day event. Training is a pattern of reinforcement that builds from awareness to competence to confidence. Users who have been told about the new system once are not trained. Users who have participated in multiple workshops, practised on test systems, and been asked to demonstrate their competence in key processes are trained. The difference is visible on day one of go-live.
Ask what percentage of the user population has completed training. Ask how many users have performed key end-to-end scenarios on a system that behaves like the production environment. Ask for evidence of competency assessment results. Ask who will support users on day one when they encounter situations that training did not cover. Ask whether users feel confident, or whether they feel anxious about the change. User confidence on go-live day is not a feeling. It is a predictor of success.
Has the cutover plan been verified end-to-end?
A cutover plan is not a document. It is a sequence of actions that will be executed under pressure at the moment the organisation is most vulnerable. A cutover plan that has never been executed, even in simulation, is a statement of hope. A cutover plan that has been executed in a controlled environment is a statement of readiness.
Ask whether a cutover dry run has been conducted. Ask which teams participated and whether the dry run used realistic data and realistic timelines. Ask what issues were identified during the dry run and whether they have been resolved. Ask whether cutover roles are assigned and whether the people in those roles understand what they are responsible for delivering. Ask how many hours the cutover will take and whether that window is acceptable to the business. A steering committee that approves go-live without a verified cutover plan is gambling with the business.
Is there a tested rollback plan and business continuity?
Go-live will not fail perfectly. It will fail partially. The system will come up but payment processing will fail. Data will load but reconciliation will surface discrepancies. Users will be working in the new system but customer orders will be stuck in the old system. The question is not whether something will fail. The question is whether you are prepared to manage what fails.
Ask whether a rollback plan has been developed and who is responsible for executing it. Ask how long it would take to roll back if go-live becomes unmanageable. Ask whether the organisation can operate on legacy systems for a period of time while the new system is remediated. Ask whether there are any business processes that cannot tolerate any disruption. Ask what the manual processes will look like if the system fails for 24 hours. A steering committee that does not know the answer to these questions is accepting blind risk.
Have all accountable stakeholders formally signed off?
Go-live sign-off is often treated as a administrative checkbox. It is not. It is a governance checkpoint that enforces accountability. When a business sponsor, a technical lead, and a delivery assurance lead sign off on go-live, they are confirming that they have reviewed the state of the programme and believe it is ready. They are accepting accountability for that decision. This changes the conversation.
Ask who has signed off on go-live readiness. Ask for evidence of that sign-off. Ask what conditions or caveats were attached to the sign-off. Ask who has declined to sign off and why. Ask what steps need to be taken to get all required stakeholders to the point where they can confidently sign off. A go-live that lacks formal sign-off from all accountable parties has not been governed. It has been defaulted to.
A steering committee that asks these seven questions early, repeatedly, and with the intention of actually hearing the answers will make the right decision about go-live. A steering committee that waits until the last moment, or that does not want to hear bad news, will make the wrong decision and discover it too late to fix. Go-live is a governance decision. Treat it like one.
Go-live is not when you turn on the new system. Go-live is when you decide that you are prepared for what happens next.
Ask these questions. Ask them repeatedly. Require honest answers. Only then make the decision.