 <p>Depending on the admins, automation is helpful. I've had windows admins that want a Word doc with step by step instructions and other admins that wanted a script.</p> <p>However, some helpful things to include, probably as sections</p> <ul> <li>Database changes <ul> <li>Scripts to run</li> <li>Verification that they worked</li> </ul></li> <li>Configuration changes <ul> <li>what are the change</li> <li>where is a version of the new file (In my case they diffed the two, which helped reduced errors concerning production-specific values)</li> </ul></li> <li>General verification <ul> <li>what should be different from the user perspective (feature changes)</li> </ul></li> <li>For web farm deployments, it might be helpful to have a coordination document concerning how the servers need to be pulled in and out of pool.</li> </ul>