Steps:

• Verify CI. Verify that all CI are green, all CI badges should be green - https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle
• Next version. Review all changes in Release notes for release notes and if where typos in issue titles - fix them. if changed, run manually to double check your updates. If notes generation failed, fix it.
• recheck queue of GitHub actions, if long queue - cancel all. It will help to make release execution quick. All PRs can rebase after release so CI will re-execute, no need to return them after release.

• R: Release

In case of any problem in the middle of execution, use triggering of release steps manually one by one - https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/wiki/Semi-automated-release

In case of authentication problems to sonatype maven central, recheck https://central.sonatype.org/publish/generate-token/ and regenerate tokens and put them to https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/settings/secrets/actions for SONATYPE_* variables