August 2016 Summaries

Netflix's legendary engineering team is known for its data-driven culture and frequent micro-deployments, which have contributed to its success in the video industry. The company uses a virtuous cycle of product innovation, constantly testing changes on new users and using past data to optimize their strategies. However, focusing solely on one metric can degrade other metrics, so it's essential to have a contra-metric to keep an eye on. Businesses can learn from Netflix by having clear goals for changes, breaking down projects into easily quantifiable chunks, and leveraging domain expertise through iterative testing.

Martin Mao is the co-founder and former CEO of Pivotal Software, a company that provides software development tools and services. In this episode, he discusses his experience in creating market categories and how it applies to startups. He emphasizes the importance of understanding whether you are creating a market category or not, as everything after that will follow. Martin also talks about the role of CTOs and how their job description can vary greatly depending on the company's needs.

LaunchDarkly's guide to feature flagging best practices aims to assist companies in implementing and managing feature flags effectively. The guide is designed for both beginners and experienced practitioners, providing insights into the power of feature flags and potential pitfalls. By following these best practices, companies can improve their software development process and enhance competitiveness.

Feature flags are a technique used by software organizations to control feature visibility and manage releases. However, they can accumulate technical debt if not managed properly. To avoid this, create a central repository for all feature flags, use clear and unambiguous names for them, and have a plan in place for flag removal once their purpose is served. This helps maintain system integrity while allowing flexibility in managing features.

Sam Stokes, co-founder of Rapportive, shares his insights on testing and feature flagging. He suggests explicitly testing both sides of the flag to manage increased complexity and catch potential issues in old code paths. This practice also serves as a reminder to clean up old code and delete flags when necessary. Additionally, it can provide pushback against having too many interacting flags, prompting refactoring or flag retirement.

The Norwegian Developer Conference (NDC) held in Sydney recently featured a talk by Dolphin on "Faster and less risky releases with feature flags". NDC focuses on Microsoft technologies and Agile, attracting developers from various parts of Australia and international speakers. The event included practical and theoretical talks, as well as networking opportunities such as a boat cruise and PubConf. Dolphin's talk on feature flagging was well-received by attendees who were either already using the technique or looking to incorporate it into their development process. Overall, NDC Sydney offered valuable insights for developers interested in both practical and cultural aspects of technology and fostered connections with friendly Australian developers.

In this episode of To Be Continuous, Edith and Paul discuss the importance of validating your product or service before launching it to the market. They emphasize that validation is not just about building something people want, but also about having a clear distribution strategy in place from the very beginning. They share their experiences with various companies and how they have used different strategies for growth and success. The conversation begins with Edith mentioning feature flags as a way to validate product ideas without actually launching them. Paul agrees that this can be useful, but warns against using feature flags as a substitute for branching in your codebase. He emphasizes the importance of paying back any technical debt you may accumulate while validating your product. Edith then talks about how some people use LaunchDarkly to enforce licensing agreements by creating different versions of their product for each customer. While this can be effective, she cautions against creating too many one-off products that cannot be combined or maintained easily. Paul agrees and adds that sometimes it's necessary to build multiple implementations of a feature in order to get feedback from early adopters. However, he stresses the importance of pruning these features once they have served their purpose. The discussion then shifts towards distribution strategies and how they should be considered alongside product development efforts. Edith shares her experience with coaching musicians on their go-to-market strategy, emphasizing that even if you're just building something for yourself, it's important to think about how you will distribute it. Paul agrees and suggests that loving your distribution model is just as valuable as loving your product itself. He also points out the difference between B2B and consumer businesses in terms of their distribution strategies and revenue models. Towards the end of the episode, Edith and Paul talk about how venture capitalists have raised the bar for what constitutes a successful pre-seed round validation and traction. They discuss various ways to validate your product or service idea before seeking funding from investors. Overall, this episode provides valuable insights into the world of startups and entrepreneurship, highlighting the importance of validating your ideas through customer feedback and distribution strategies.

The traditional waterfall method of software releases often lacks explicit release planning, leading to difficulties in continuous delivery and feedback gathering. With the rise of DevOps, teams are now integrating feature release and rollout controls into the product development process. Feature flags can be used to control the visibility and on/off state of a particular feature by wrapping the code in a conditional. This encourages developers to plan for initial feature rollout, improvements based on user feedback, and overall feature adoption. By incorporating release strategy from the start, teams can ensure smooth software release matriculation from build to release to sunset. Release strategy involves collaborative planning of rollout and release strategies, controlled feature testing in QA and staging environments, and incremental or targeted feature deployment in production. This approach fosters a continuous feedback loop as teams can synthesize performance metrics and iterate based on feedback, leading to faster and better software development.