Kill switches vs progressive delivery: Choosing a deployment strategy

In the article, Michael Ferranti explores two deployment strategies: kill switches and progressive delivery. A kill switch is a reactive mechanism designed for immediate issue resolution, allowing teams to disable features or roll back applications quickly when critical problems occur, prioritizing system stability with minimal configuration. Progressive delivery, in contrast, is a proactive approach that gradually releases new features to users in controlled phases, utilizing techniques like canary releases and feature flags to manage exposure and gather performance data incrementally. This method reduces risk by catching issues early and enables data-driven adjustments based on real-world metrics. While kill switches are simple and suited for high-risk deployments needing rapid rollback, progressive delivery is more complex, requiring sophisticated infrastructure but offering nuanced risk mitigation and insights for user-facing applications. Feature flags play a crucial role in both strategies, providing centralized control for toggling features and managing rollout processes effectively.