# Alerts silent after metric rename: pre-release checklist

Source: https://releasefailures.com/incidents/alerts-silent-after-metric-rename/
Content version: 1.0.0
Verified on: 2026-10-22
Licence: CC BY 4.0

Definition: Renamed metrics or labels leave alerts pointing at nothing.
- [ ] PR-01 Compare the collector's exported metric names with the previous release and fail the build on any rename or removal not listed in the changelog. (test class: Contract tests)
- [ ] PR-02 Compare the label set of each exported metric with the previous release and fail on any added or removed label that an alert query filters on. (test class: Contract tests)
- [ ] PR-03 Before upgrading the collector, run every alert rule's query against a staging metrics server on the new version and fail on any query that returns no series. (test class: Configuration and environment tests)
- [ ] PR-04 Confirm every metric named in the bundled alert rules appears in the release's list of emitted metrics. (test class: Configuration and environment tests)
- [ ] PR-05 Confirm the dashboards and the alert rules in the same bundle reference the same metric names. (test class: Configuration and environment tests)
- [ ] PR-06 Deploy the v2 tracing backend in a test environment, load the bundled alert rules and confirm the metric behind each rule returns data. (test class: End-to-end tests)
- [ ] PR-07 After each collector upgrade in a test environment, query the failed-spans counter by its documented name and fail when it returns no data. (test class: End-to-end tests)