When you're working flat out to ship something, it's easy to miss the one thing that might make or break your project. And no, I'm not talking about anything related to building the product itself.

I’m talking about what happens after the launch - support.

70% of software projects fail because no one takes care of them after launch.

Why does this matter so much? And how do you actually do it properly?

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“After go-live? It’ll just run itself now.” (Spoiler: it won’t.)

Your team’s been deep in code for weeks or months.

You shipped. Nothing crashed. The client’s happy. Time to celebrate.

Here’s the catch. In many cases, the riskiest part starts now. And it’s not just about bugs.

This is when real users start forming their opinion of the whole thing. Most of what people care about in IT support isn’t fancy design or a long list of features. It’s simple: when something breaks, does someone help me quickly and clearly?

First 30 Days = Real-World Test

Everything worked in testing. Now you’ve got real data, real users, and real edge cases.

Stuff will break. It always does. Some issues are small. Others can wipe out the project’s value.

So how do you avoid blowing the launch? Here are a few things you should lock down before you hit “deploy”:

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Who’s the first responder?

It sounds obvious, but this trips up so many teams.

You need one person or team who owns incoming issues. PM, lead dev, support - doesn’t matter. What matters is someone knows they’re on the hook when something breaks.

For the first month, this should be their top focus. Instead of “email and wait,” users get a quick response.

What if something major breaks?

You don’t need a formal playbook. You need a plan.

Who can roll back a release?
Who explains what’s going on to users?
Who checks if the issue is our code or something in the infrastructure?

Otherwise, everyone tries to help at once, and that's not good. That’s why one person owning the process makes all the difference.

How fast do you respond?

As I mentioned before, people don’t always need an instant fix. But they need to know they’re not being ignored.

Even a quick message like “We’ve seen it, we’re checking now, will update you later today” makes a big difference.

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How do you handle feedback?

In the chaos of early days, it’s easy to treat tickets as things to just fix and forget. But they’re not just that. They tell you what users expected and didn’t get. Tag them clearly. Bug, feature request, UX issue, documentation gap. And track if the same things come up more than once.

Three separate users reporting the same thing? That’s not an edge case.

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When are we done?

It sounds weird, but you need a finish line. Otherwise, “launch support” never really ends.

Choose a rule - 30 clean days, user sign-off, or a firm date. Just make sure everyone knows when the project switches from launch mode to normal support. If you get all of this in place before go-live, you’ll avoid a ton of stress later and your post-launch will actually feel like a success.

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Want to know more about this topic?

Curious to learn more? Read our IT support lead Sue’s take on the Seven Principles of Software Testing. She breaks it down with real-world tips and advice.

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Need help thinking through your post-launch process? Reach out! we’re happy to share what’s worked for us.