Here’s a simple checklist for people who deploy machine learning models to production. Based on my personal experience.

Before deployment

  • Identify Bias: Will the bias affect users? Discuss with the product team.
  • Performance Profile: List your hardware requirements: CPU/GPU/RAM/DISK, sustaining usage or burst?
  • Model file size: Avoid network congestion. Decide on push-based or pull-based deployment.
  • Continuous testing: Test the model on real-world data. Check for over-fitting.

Deploying

  • Prepare for rollback.
  • Use canary deployment if possible.

After deployment

  • Log Collection: collect log for debugging, remove personal information, sample if needed.
  • Error handling: No model is perfect. Respond to user feedback, fast.
  • Emergency response: Be prepare to fix the application with heuristic rules.
  • Observability: Detect concept drift in the real world asap.