Universal Containers is adding drone delivery to service offerings, and the developer has written and tested code prior to deployment to production…

Validating an inbound change set in the target production environment is a critical best practice. This action performs a "check-only" or simulated deployment, which runs all specified Apex tests and verifies component dependencies without committing any changes to the organization. This allows the app builder to identify and resolve any potential errors, such as test failures or missing components, well before the actual deployment window. A successful validation provides a high degree of confidence that the final deployment will also succeed, which is crucial when the primary developer is unavailable for troubleshooting.

A. Remove Apex classes from the inbound change set.

This would deploy an incomplete and non-functional feature, as the code required for the drone delivery service would be missing.

C. Use a metadata package set.

While a valid deployment method, the scenario states a change set is already prepared. Switching deployment tools at the last minute introduces unnecessary complexity and risk.

D. Validate the outbound change set.

Validation is a process performed on an inbound change set in the target organization. There is no feature to validate an outbound change set in the source organization.

1. Salesforce Help, Deploy a Change Set: "To perform a test deployment to see the success or failure messages that would occur with an actual deployment, click Validate. This process doesn’t save any components to the org. It only checks for and displays possible errors."

2. Salesforce Help, Change Sets Best Practices: "Validate a change set before you deploy it. A validation simulates a deployment to show you the success or failure messages you would receive with an actual deployment."

3. Apex Developer Guide, Deploying Apex: "When deploying to a production organization, all local tests in your organization are run by default... The validation process checks whether the deployment will succeed and if your organization's requirements are met, such as code coverage." This process is initiated by the 'Validate' step in a change set deployment.