July 2020 Summaries

LaunchDarkly's Trajectory Nano Series, a four-part mini-series leading up to their conference on August 26-27, kicked off with the first week focusing on the Build Pillar of feature management. The Build pillar covers feature flag use cases that enable teams to build and deliver software faster, with less risk. Key points include separating deployment from release, testing in production, targeted rollouts, canary launches, and speaker John Feminella's talk on "Making releases boring in the enterprise." Next week will cover Operate, the Second Pillar of Feature Management.

LaunchDarkly has released its Lua SDK for server-side use, offering feature flag management in lightweight, portable scripting environments. The SDK is compatible with NGINX and HAProxy, allowing users to control features within reverse proxies and load balancers. Developers can leverage the Lua SDK alongside C-server functions to access LaunchDarkly's feature management suite for efficient behavioral changes across platforms. The Lua reference guide provides guidance on getting started with the SDK, which can be embedded in applications or accessed via system package managers.

LaunchDarkly's first virtual conference, Trajectory LIVE, is set to take place with its agenda now live. The event will feature a series of Nano sessions leading up to the main conference, which will include keynotes, product updates, talks, and interactive sessions. Notable speakers at the event include Emily Freeman from Microsoft, James Governor from RedMonk, Michael McKay from IBM, Liz Fong-Jones from Honeycomb, and Aaron Kraft from H&R Block. The conference aims to cover topics such as DevOps, Progressive Delivery, observability, release practices, hypothesis-driven development, chaos engineering, continuous deployment, and more. Registration for the free event is open.

Feature management is a new class of software development tools and practices that help teams ship code faster and reduce risks in releases. It involves using feature flags to manage features throughout the development process. LaunchDarkly has identified four key pillars of feature management: Build, Operate, Learn, and Empower. These pillars align with the core tenets of Progressive Delivery, a new software development life cycle methodology that enables teams to deliver and control software effectively. Feature flags allow developers to decouple deployments from releases, enabling engineers to ship features as soon as they're done while business stakeholders can release those features at their own pace. This approach improves productivity, deployment velocity, system stability, product quality, and customer satisfaction.

Tray.io uses LaunchDarkly for feature management and managing feature releases. The main challenge they face is access across different teams in different time zones. To address this, they integrated LaunchDarkly with their own product, the Tray Platform, which allows users to create API integrations, automate processes, and make just about anything possible. They built two workflows: one to update the list of flags that is populated in the Slack modal, and another to create the Slack modal, which updates the feature flag. The platform uses flexible logical operators for validation and verification of users, ensuring they are only updating their own flag or have admin rights to update a customer's flag.

LaunchDarkly transitioned from a polling to a streaming architecture for flag evaluations over its six years of operation. Initially, they used polling but eventually moved to streaming due to the drawbacks of frequent polling such as increased bandwidth consumption and potential server overwhelm. They first decided to buy a third-party solution before building their own streaming architecture. The hybrid model initially employed had issues with scalability and efficiency, leading them to develop personalized flag streams for individual users connecting to their service. This resulted in rapid updates when flags change with significantly less bandwidth consumption, benefiting both LaunchDarkly's customers and their end-users.

In this episode of Test in Production, Yoz and Ben discuss the concept of virtual squads at InVision. Virtual squads are temporary teams formed to tackle specific projects or initiatives that require cross-functional collaboration. They can be useful for addressing urgent needs or exploring new opportunities without disrupting existing teams' dynamics and productivity. Ben shares his experience leading a virtual squad focused on improving the developer experience within InVision's platform. The team consisted of members from different squads, each bringing unique skills and perspectives to the project. They worked together in an agile manner, with regular stand-ups and retrospectives, to quickly iterate on ideas and deliver value to customers. Some key takeaways from this discussion include: 1. Virtual squads are best suited for short-term projects or initiatives that require cross-functional collaboration but do not warrant the permanent restructuring of existing teams. 2. Effective virtual squads rely on trust, clear communication, and a shared understanding of the project's goals and outcomes. 3. It is essential to balance the needs of individual team members with those of the broader organization when forming virtual squads. This may involve considering factors such as personal career growth opportunities and ensuring that sacrifices made by existing teams are recognized and acknowledged. 4. Virtual squads should be temporary in nature, dissolving once their specific objectives have been achieved or if they prove unsuccessful. 5. Cross-pollination of best practices and lessons learned between virtual squads and other teams within the organization can help drive continuous improvement across the entire business. Overall, virtual squads offer a flexible approach to addressing complex challenges that require diverse skill sets and perspectives while minimizing disruption to existing team dynamics and productivity levels.

LaunchDarkly has introduced its official Partner Program with the aim of empowering technology partners to build better software together. The program includes a range of integrations that seamlessly enhance existing toolkits, and partnerships with innovative tech companies like Honeycomb and Rollbar. While integrations are important, the company emphasizes that behind each integration are talented people from various teams who contribute valuable insights. The LaunchDarkly Partner Program is committed to growing, supporting, and building solutions with business partners worldwide. Interested parties can register for free or contact [email protected] for more information.

Feature flags are useful tools for testing and managing software infrastructure. Single-level feature flags offer simplicity but may lack complexity to solve certain problems. Adding levels of hierarchy to feature flags allows for better control, flexibility, and abstraction. Prerequisite flags can be set as dependencies on existing flags, enabling more complex decision-making processes. A common use case is bundling multiple sub-features under a prerequisite flag, allowing teams to work independently while progressively rolling out the feature in production. Once testing is complete and the feature is fully rolled out, the flags can be removed from the codebase.

The 2020 Trajectory Conference, initially scheduled for April, is transitioning to an online experience due to the ongoing pandemic. The event will now feature a mini-series called Trajectory Nano Series sessions starting from July 29th and the main event, Trajectory LIVE, on August 26th and 27th. This new format aims to provide an engaging experience for attendees, sponsors, and community members using video conferencing technology. The online conference will be free of charge, with refunds being issued for those who purchased tickets for the original event. Sponsorship opportunities are available by contacting [email protected].