Company
Date Published
Author
Ethan Jones
Word count
1255
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Feature flags are a powerful tool for product managers, enabling them to control feature releases, gather early customer feedback, and reduce dependence on engineering teams, which streamlines the development process and enhances customer-centric development. While feature flags are typically seen as an engineering tool, they play a significant role for product managers, allowing them to test and validate user experiences with customers, manage beta programs, and enable direct customer interaction without engineering involvement. They facilitate experimentation by serving different user experiences and collecting data for analysis, though they work best when integrated with specialized data platforms for user behavior analysis. Feature flags also separate release from deployment, allowing product managers to schedule feature launches independently of engineering timelines, thus making launch days less chaotic and more controlled. This capability fosters autonomy and customer-focused practices within modern software delivery teams, making feature flags essential for achieving an empowered product management approach.