Post-Change Validation Checklist

Checklist discipline. Every item is meant to be answered yes / no with evidence. Items marked critical are non-negotiable; items marked warn are judgement calls; items marked info are baseline expectations.

Items

• Operational commands confirm the change is live (severity: critical)
• Traffic flow validated end-to-end (severity: critical)
• Routing sessions in expected state (severity: critical)
• Firewall counters show expected pass/block pattern (severity: info)
• VPN sessions up where expected (severity: info)
• Monitoring / metrics show expected values (severity: info)
• Logs show expected events (and no unexpected events) (severity: info)
• Configuration saved with ‘save’ (severity: critical)
• Change ticket updated with post-change evidence (severity: critical)
• Observation period completed without incident (severity: warn)
• Stakeholders notified of completion (severity: info)

Severity legend

• info: baseline expectation
• warn: judgement call; production-grade depends on context
• critical: non-negotiable; a missed critical item is a release blocker

Evidence retention

The completed checklist is evidence for the change ticket, the audit, and the post-incident review. Store it where it can be recovered if the router is lost.