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To ship Unicis Platform releases consistently, with clear quality gates, predictable communication, and no surprises for customers or the community.

Peter Zlatev — CTO / Co-Founder

This process starts when the team agrees a set of features/fixes is ready to ship — either at the end of a planned sprint or when a critical fix requires an unplanned release.

1. Release candidate scoped — Peter reviews open PRs and issues in GitHub. Agrees with Predrag on what is in scope for the release. Creates a GitHub milestone for the release version (e.g., v0.X.0). \\Tool: GitHub
2. Feature freeze — All in-scope PRs must be submitted. No new features added after feature freeze. Ongoing work continues in feature branches. \\Tool: GitHub
3. Code review & merge — All in-scope PRs reviewed and merged to main. At least one reviewer per PR (Peter or designated reviewer). \\Tool: GitHub
4. QA pass — Predrag and Peter run through the QA checklist for the release:
   
   • Core framework flows (NIS2, GDPR, ISO 27001) work end-to-end
     
   • SoA export (XLSX, PDF, HTML) renders correctly
     
   • REST API (at /api-docs) returns correct responses
     
   • Svix webhooks fire on key events
     
   • Auth flows (login, SSO if applicable) work correctly
     
   • No console errors or broken UI in Chromium and Firefox
     

Tool: Unicis staging environment

1. Release notes drafted — Predrag drafts release notes in Markdown (Decap CMS). Structure: summary paragraph, What's New, Bug Fixes, Known Issues, Upgrade Notes. \\Tool: Decap CMS / unicis.tech/admin
2. Tag and release — Peter creates the GitHub release tag (vX.X.X), publishes the GitHub Release with the release notes, and triggers the deployment pipeline. \\Tool: GitHub, CI/CD pipeline
3. Deployment verified — Peter confirms the new version is live on the SaaS instance. Checks status.unicis.tech shows no incidents. Verifies Grafana metrics are nominal. \\Tool: status.unicis.tech, Grafana
4. Release blog post published — Predrag publishes the release blog post on unicis.tech. Post follows the writing style guide. Includes screenshots, changelog summary, and upgrade guide link. \\Tool: Decap CMS
5. Community announcement — Predrag posts the release announcement to: LinkedIn, Discord #announcements, Matrix #community, and GitHub Discussions. Links to the blog post. \\Tool: LinkedIn, Discord, Matrix, GitHub
6. Mautic newsletter (if major release) — For minor/patch releases, community posts are sufficient. For major releases (new framework, new module), Predrag sends a release email to the Mautic newsletter list. \\Tool: Mautic

The process is complete when:

• The GitHub release is tagged and published
• The SaaS instance is running the new version with no active incidents
• The blog post is live on unicis.tech
• Community announcements are posted
• Grafana shows nominal metrics 30 minutes post-deployment

• GitHub — source control, PRs, milestones, release tags
• CI/CD pipeline — automated build and deployment (GitLab CI or GitHub Actions)
• Unicis staging environment — QA testing
• Grafana / Prometheus — post-deployment monitoring
• status.unicis.tech — public status page
• Decap CMS — blog post authoring
• Mautic — newsletter for major releases
• Discord / Matrix / LinkedIn — community announcements

• Hotfixes: For critical security or data integrity fixes, skip feature freeze and QA checklist (except auth and data flows). Ship immediately, post-mortem within 48h.
• EU Project-linked releases: If a release includes deliverables tied to OSCRAT, VIC, or another EU project, notify Alexander before publishing so he can update project documentation.
• Breaking changes: Any breaking change to the REST API or database schema requires a migration guide in the release notes and a minimum 2-week notice in GitHub Discussions before shipping.

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