February 2019 Summaries

LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform, has partnered with Atlassian's Bitbucket Pipes to introduce its new Code References feature. This integration aims to streamline the process of managing feature flags in CI/CD workflows for modern development teams. The Code References feature helps developers identify files referencing feature flags in their Git repositories, making it easier to remove technical debt and ensure safe deployment practices. With this partnership, LaunchDarkly's Code References Bitbucket Pipe sends updated snippets back to the platform during each deploy, ensuring that all new code is wrapped in a flag when deployed and that feature flags are safely removed after release.

LaunchDarkly has added support for storing and switching between multiple projects in their Android and iOS clients, allowing developers to use feature flags across different projects within an app. This update does not require any changes to the SDK interfaces. The new feature is demonstrated through an example for Android, where a mobile app depends on a common platform shared by other applications. Developers can now access the client instance for their chosen project with just one method call.

Feature Management is a tool that creates a feedback loop for product development, allowing companies to analyze user behavior data and make more informed decisions. By using feature flags as counters to track user interaction with given sections of code, businesses can create models for user interaction that can be quantified, leading to more data-driven decisions for their products. Controlled releases of features in the context of experiments help collect user behavior data and improve product development. Feature management also allows for faster recovery from mistakes by enabling quick iteration and adjustment based on customer feedback. Additionally, it helps maintain clean code by tracking feature flag usage and expiration dates, reducing technical debt. Overall, feature management complements DevOps methodology by bringing business metrics into the Continuous Delivery model.

The article discusses the importance of separating deployment from feature releases in DevOps to increase development speed while reducing risks for businesses. It highlights the concept of "dark" or "canary" launching, which allows developers to test features in production without affecting all users. Feature flags are also mentioned as a tool that enables independent updates and control over user exposure to new functionality. The article emphasizes the need for robust feature management to cater to different user preferences and paces of adoption. It concludes by stating that implementing feature management in the development lifecycle allows developers, operators, and product managers to have more control over how an application or service is experienced by customers while ensuring stability and testing in production.

LaunchDarkly is excited to announce its first conference, Trajectory, focused on feature management, flagging systems, testing in production, and trunk-based development. The company aims to bring together experts from the field to exchange ideas and best practices. This year marks an inflection point for feature management adoption, and LaunchDarkly wants to help broaden its application by sharing insights on how testing, design, development, release, and sales can be accelerated and made more powerful. The conference will feature a keynote from Adrian Cockcroft of Amazon Web Services and sessions hosted by industry leaders like Cindy Alvarez of Microsoft. Trajectory aims to foster collaboration and learning within the community while helping shape the future direction of LaunchDarkly's offerings.

The pace of software updates has accelerated dramatically in recent years, with companies like GitHub releasing multiple updates per day using practices such as automated testing and continuous integration. This shift reflects a change in the way people and businesses approach software adoption, empowering employees to release features early and often while iterating quickly. As companies race to keep up with industry leaders, product managers must balance increased release velocity with external expectations for innovative services. By dividing feature development into three phases - concept, launch, and control - product managers can create a strategy that meets urgent expectations without sacrificing quality or user experience. This includes starting with the end in mind by identifying implications of new features on overall service, creating continuous experiments to measure success, and focusing on control points to minimize the impact of mistakes and reduce resolution time.

LaunchDarkly has introduced a new feature called Code References, which helps users locate instances of their feature flags in their codebase. This utility, named ld-find-code-refs, is available as a Github Action, CircleCI Orb, and command-line utility. It scans deployed code and sends snippets back to LaunchDarkly for verification. Code References can be set up per project and integrated into standard deployment workflows using Orbs. This feature is currently in public beta and available to all LaunchDarkly customers.