What is the minimum SLA for a GA feature?

It depends on your product tier and customer expectations, but most B2B SaaS features should target 99.9% uptime (roughly 8.7 hours of downtime per year) at GA. Features that handle financial data or critical workflows may need 99.95% or higher. Define the SLA based on customer impact, not engineering ambition.

How do I handle features that pass technical readiness but fail sales or support enablement?

Delay the GA. A feature that engineering is proud of but sales cannot explain and support cannot troubleshoot will generate more problems than revenue. Use the delay to fast-track enablement. Run an intensive training sprint for the lagging workstream. GA is a cross-functional commitment, not an engineering milestone.

Should we announce a GA date before the go/no-go gate?

Announce a target quarter, not a specific date, until you pass Gate 2 (end of Enable phase). After Gate 2, you have enough confidence in cross-functional readiness to commit to a date publicly. Announcing too early creates external pressure to ship before readiness, which is the most common cause of poor GA launches.

What metrics should we track in the first week after GA?

Five core metrics: [feature adoption rate](/metrics/feature-adoption-rate), [activation rate](/metrics/activation-rate), support ticket volume per 100 users, error rate versus SLA target, and revenue impact (new signups, upsells, or expansion attributed to the feature). Set targets for each before launch so the post-launch review has clear success criteria. ---

General Availability Roadmap Template

Quick Answer (TL;DR)

This free PowerPoint template plans the transition from preview or beta to general availability. The moment your feature becomes a fully supported, SLA-backed production capability. It coordinates five workstreams (Engineering, Support, Sales, Marketing, and Legal) across a GA readiness timeline with hard go/no-go gates. Download the .pptx, define your GA criteria, and ensure every team is ready to stand behind the feature on day one.

What This Template Includes

Cover slide. Feature name, GA date, SLA tier, and executive sponsor.
Instructions slide. GA readiness checklist, SLA definition guide, and go/no-go review process. Remove before presenting.
Blank template slide. Four-phase timeline (Harden, Enable, Stage, Launch) with five workstream rows and three go/no-go gates. Readiness dashboard with red/amber/green scoring.
Filled example slide. A 6-week GA preparation for a new analytics platform, showing scalability testing milestones, support certification, sales playbook completion, marketing campaign timeline, and the final go/no-go gate with all five workstreams scored.

Why GA Is More Than Flipping a Switch

Teams that treat GA as the moment they remove the "beta" label miss most of what makes a launch succeed or fail. GA is a commitment. It tells customers that the feature is production-ready, supported, and will not be pulled. That commitment carries obligations across every team.

Engineering must guarantee the feature meets SLA targets. Support must handle any user who encounters issues, not just a curated beta cohort. Sales must explain the feature to prospects accurately. Marketing must position it in the product's broader narrative. Legal must sign off on any new data handling, billing changes, or terms of service updates.

When any of these teams is not ready, the consequences cascade. Engineering gets paged for issues support could have deflected. Sales promises capabilities the feature does not have. Marketing drives traffic to a feature that is not onboarding well. The result is a feature that is technically available but operationally failing.

A GA roadmap prevents this by making readiness visible and measurable across every function, using the same cross-functional discipline described in the product launch guide.

Template Structure

Four-Phase Timeline

Harden (Weeks 1-2). Performance optimization, load testing at 2-3x expected scale, security audit, data integrity validation, SLA threshold verification.
Enable (Weeks 2-4). Sales training, support certification, documentation finalization, knowledge base updates, escalation procedure testing.
Stage (Weeks 4-5). Marketing assets finalized, launch announcement drafted, pricing confirmed, legal review complete, customer migration from preview/beta.
Launch (Week 6). Go/no-go decision, public announcement, monitoring war room for 72 hours, post-launch retrospective scheduled.

Five Workstream Rows

Engineering. Load testing, failover testing, monitoring dashboards, runbook completion, on-call rotation setup.
Support. Feature certification (every agent passes a proficiency test), escalation playbooks, SLA monitoring dashboards, first-response templates.
Sales. Feature demo scripts, competitive positioning, pricing integration, objection handling guide, account-based launch plans for key prospects.
Marketing. Launch blog post, email campaign, website updates, social content, press outreach, customer case studies from beta/preview.
Legal. Terms of service updates, data processing agreement review, SLA contract language, compliance certification (if applicable).

Go/No-Go Gates

Three gates force cross-functional readiness checks:

Gate 1 (End of Harden). Engineering readiness confirmed. SLA thresholds met in testing. No P0 or P1 bugs open.
Gate 2 (End of Enable). Support certified. Sales trained. Documentation complete and reviewed.
Gate 3 (End of Stage). Marketing assets approved. Legal sign-off complete. Migration plan tested. All five workstreams green or amber-with-mitigation.

Each gate requires all workstreams to score green or amber. A single red workstream triggers a discussion: fix the gap, descope the launch, or delay.

How to Use This Template

1. Define GA-level SLAs

Before anything else, document the SLA commitments you are making. Uptime target (99.9%? 99.95%?), response time guarantees, data durability commitments, and support response time by severity level. These SLAs determine your engineering hardening bar and support staffing requirements. Track these against your system uptime dashboards.

2. Run hardening and scale testing

Load test at 2-3x your expected GA traffic. Test failover scenarios: what happens when a dependency goes down? Validate data integrity under concurrent writes. Fix every issue that would cause an SLA breach. The goal is not perfection. It is confidence that you can meet your published commitments under realistic conditions.

3. Enable customer-facing teams

Support agents should pass a feature proficiency test before GA. Sales should demo the feature cleanly and handle the top five objections. Marketing should have approved assets ready to publish. None of this work can start on launch day. It must be complete before the go/no-go gate.

4. Stage the launch

Queue all marketing communications. Confirm pricing in the billing system. Complete the migration path for preview/beta users. Run through the launch-day checklist once as a dry run. Identify who is on call for the first 72 hours and what the escalation chain looks like.

5. Launch and monitor

The go/no-go gate is a 30-minute meeting where each workstream lead reports their status. If all green, launch. Post-launch, staff a monitoring war room for 72 hours covering error rates, support ticket volume, customer satisfaction, and adoption metrics. Schedule the retrospective for one week after launch.

When to Use This Template

GA roadmaps are essential whenever a feature transitions from limited availability to full production support. Use this template when:

SLA commitments are involved and engineering needs to verify that the feature meets published reliability and performance targets
Multiple customer-facing teams must be ready simultaneously. A feature that sales cannot demo or support cannot troubleshoot is not GA-ready
Preview or beta users need migration to the GA version without data loss, configuration changes, or service disruption
Legal review is required for new data handling, billing changes, or terms of service updates that accompany the feature
The launch has revenue implications. New pricing tiers, upsell opportunities, or competitive positioning that depends on the feature being publicly available

For the earlier stages of the release lifecycle, use the Beta Launch Roadmap template for structured testing or the Early Access Roadmap template for demand validation. If the feature is already GA and you are planning the market push, the Go-to-Market Roadmap template covers positioning, channels, and campaign execution.

Featured in

This template is featured in Roadmap Templates for Startups and MVPs, a curated collection of roadmap templates for this use case.

Key Takeaways

GA is a cross-functional commitment, not an engineering milestone. Every customer-facing team must be ready to support the feature on day one.
SLA definitions must be finalized before hardening begins. You cannot test against targets you have not set.
Three go/no-go gates ensure readiness builds progressively and gaps surface weeks before launch, not hours.
Support certification and sales training are launch blockers, not nice-to-haves. Untrained teams create poor customer experiences that undermine adoption.
The first 72 hours after GA reveal the gap between your readiness criteria and reality. Staff a war room and monitor closely.
Compatible with Google Slides, Keynote, and LibreOffice Impress. Upload the .pptx to Google Drive to edit collaboratively in your browser.

General Availability Roadmap Template for PowerPoint