November 2023 Summaries

This article discusses best practices for shipping and releasing software without causing unnecessary delays or problems. The first practice involves operating continuously, which means all steps in the process should happen simultaneously rather than sequentially. Testing in production is another important practice, as it allows developers to identify potential issues before they affect users. Gathering early feedback from users can also help improve features and ensure that the right ones are being developed. Reducing risk through feature flags and effective incident response processes is crucial for minimizing problems during releases. Finally, communication and collaboration among team members are essential for successful software development and release.

Feature flags are a software development concept that allow developers to enable or disable features without modifying source code or redeploying. They decouple deployment from release, enabling teams to deploy new features without making them visible to users and allowing for precise targeting and control. This improves the speed and stability of development teams by reducing the stress around releases and enabling faster resolution of incidents. Feature flags are more versatile, sophisticated, and powerful than configuration files. They can be used in various scenarios such as de-risking software releases, improving reliability and operational health, targeting and personalizing software experiences, learning through product experimentation and A/B testing, and reducing the risk of migrations. Feature flags can be deployed using different methods including config files, databases, open-source solutions, or feature management platforms like LaunchDarkly. Proper naming strategies and regular flag cleanup are essential to manage technical debt associated with feature flags.

LaunchDarkly introduces the Mobile Lifecycle Assistant, designed to help mobile development teams overcome challenges in delivering best-in-class mobile app experiences. The assistant addresses each stage of the mobile app lifecycle, from developing and publishing apps to addressing bugs and sunsetting legacy versions. It enables automated targeting contexts out of the box, allows for feature releases on a developer's schedule, reduces the risk of customer-impacting bugs, and gracefully migrates users off legacy app versions. Additionally, it helps maintain proper flag hygiene and further optimizes mobile experiences by integrating with other core services.

Migration Assistant is a new set of capabilities designed to simplify and reduce risk during technology migrations. It includes a migration flag type for better predictability, controlled cohort progression for incremental movement of traffic allocation, consistency checks to maintain confidence in results between old and new datastores, and tracking important metrics like latency and error rate. The platform also provides guardrails to warn teams when actions could jeopardize their migration project. Migration Assistant is now available for early access.

LaunchDarkly introduces a new software release lifecycle that separates "deploy" from "release." The feature flags decouple deployments from releases, allowing teams to control how and when code is delivered to end users. This approach enables more efficient and effective software development by methodically releasing, measuring, and iterating on software in production. LaunchDarkly's Release Assistant helps embed best practices into reusable release pipelines, while targeting allows for precise control over who receives new features based on various properties. The Release Guardian ensures critical metrics are monitored on every release with automatic alerts and roll-backs for negative changes. Additionally, out-of-the-box funnel experiments enable teams to measure the impact of product releases on business goals. Finally, the Engineering Insights Hub provides insights into team performance, allowing for iterative improvements in processes and velocity.

LaunchDarkly is a feature flag management platform that integrates with AWS services like CodeBuild and CodePipeline for efficient software release management. It enables percentage rollouts of new features, allowing providers to gradually increase the exposure of updates while minimizing risk. Customization based on user segments leads to higher user satisfaction and engagement. Seamless integration with AWS CodeBuild and CodePipeline enables swift and efficient rollbacks to address any issues promptly. By leveraging LaunchDarkly's capabilities and its AWS integrations, SaaS providers can confidently deliver updates to their users, catching potential issues early and reducing the risk of widespread failures.

The text discusses the importance of personalization in digital experiences and how it is crucial for modern software delivery. It highlights the challenges faced by engineering and product teams, such as targeting limitations, difficulty scaling feature management, and inconsistent data. To address these issues, Segment Builder is introduced as a centralized place to build and manage audience segments and feature flags that target them. The text also announces seven new data integrations with customer data and analytics platforms, data activation platforms, and mobile data collection. These integrations enable teams to leverage existing data sources for targeted and personalized software experiences. LaunchDarkly's targeting engine unlocks initiatives like progressive delivery, early access and beta testing, entitlements, and personalization that drive business growth. Segment Builder is now in General Availability (GA) for users to get started with building and targeting their first segment.

Release Assistant is a new tool by LaunchDarkly that aims to streamline the release process for software development teams. It helps align releases with organizational best practices at scale, providing real-time visibility into the status of all releases across an organization. Key features include embedding best practices into reusable release pipelines, flag release progression tracking, and a release view dashboard. Release Assistant is now in General Availability (GA) for LaunchDarkly customers to improve their software delivery processes.

The text discusses strategies for recovering from failed software deployments, emphasizing the importance of having strong foundations in place. It introduces Release Assistant as a tool that helps build release pipelines and provides visibility into feature releases across environments. Three main strategies are presented: 1) using kill switches to disable error-causing features instantly; 2) managing the blast radius by controlling who or what receives specific feature flag configurations, allowing for reactive recovery and proactive management; and 3) leveraging Release Guardian to actively monitor the state of a feature release and automatically take action based on certain thresholds being breached. The text also mentions honorable mentions such as flag triggers, APM integrations, and workflows that can be used for automation and governance in software deployments.

LaunchDarkly is a feature management platform used by leading companies across various industries to continuously ship features and updates faster and with less risk. The platform helps teams improve their software release processes, reduce deployment times, and enhance customer experiences. Companies such as AMC, Hulu, Ally Financial, Bayer's digital farming arm (Climate), and HP have successfully leveraged LaunchDarkly to achieve these benefits. By using feature flags, companies can quickly turn off specific features during high-traffic events, launch major UI updates seamlessly, improve app reliability, standardize and scale releases, and more. With LaunchDarkly, engineering teams can increase release velocity by 9x, reduce service outages by 97%, and ensure over 99% of users get a bug-free software experience.