Deploying additional site on a multisite from local to production server

Hello,
I’m working on my first multisite project in WordPress and I like doing all my updates and upgrades locally before I deploy it onto the production server, but I’m not sure what would be the best practice to do this with a multsite.

Say I’m deploying a multisite wordpress site with four sub-sites one day, and then after some time I want to add two more sites. I then would want to work on these two sites locally, and when they’re ready, deploy them to the production server.

It’s my understanding that all the multisite magic happens in the database, so when a new sub-site is created it’s created in the database. That means I have to migrate the database somehow. I was thinking I could do it this way when I need to add another site:

• Import the database from production to my local environment(so all user content is included and not lost)
• Work on the new sub-site(s) locally
• Deploy the local database with the new sites onto the production server along with new uploads and theme tweaks

But that would not be a good idea since the users can update the production site while I’m working on it locally, and then the content will be overwritten when I’m deploying the new sites with the new database.

Is there any best practice regarding this issue? I guess I could create the new sub sites on the production server and use a “coming soon”-plugin while working on it, but it sounds scary to me doing that kind of work on a production server.