Release rehearsals get skipped for the same reason many important operational checks get skipped: they feel awkward, mildly disruptive and easy to postpone. The problem is that launch risk does not disappear just because nobody looked at it directly.
It feels disruptive, so teams delay it
Many teams assume a rehearsal will slow delivery down, which makes it tempting to leave until the final stretch. In practice, skipping the rehearsal usually creates more disruption later because the first real end-to-end test happens under deadline pressure.
No one defines what success actually looks like
If nobody agrees what launch-ready means, the rehearsal never becomes a real task. It stays a vague good intention. That usually means key details like sign-off, rollback triggers, dependency checks and launch ownership are still fuzzy right when they matter most.
Rollback is treated as optional
Rollback planning is one of the first things teams quietly avoid because it forces them to think about failure in concrete terms. But that is exactly why it matters. A launch plan without a rollback plan is often just optimism with nicer formatting.
If you cannot describe how to back out of the release, you have not really rehearsed the release.
Smaller checks beat one big panic session
Release discipline works better when it is broken into smaller checks: staging review, ownership review, dependency review, sign-off, rollback path and post-launch validation. Teams are much more likely to do that than a single giant final check that tries to solve everything at once.
The point is not ceremony. It is confidence based on evidence rather than hope.