5 Strategies to De-Risk Software Releases in Financial Services

A software outage in July cost Fortune 500 companies an estimated $5.4 billion, highlighting the potential devastation of a single bug. To mitigate risks, engineers can employ five strategies: deploy code to production first and release later using feature flags; progressively deliver features to subsets of users; use kill switches as safety nets with feature flags; change broken configurations on the fly with long-term operational flags; and implement monitoring and automatic remediation solutions. These strategies help reduce risks, improve system reliability, and minimize customer impact during software updates or incidents.