Imagine a future where we deploy every code change directly into production because feature flags eliminated the need for staging. Feature flags allow us to deploy any code change, but only launch the feature to a specific set of users that we want to expose to new capabilities. Monitoring the usage and the impact enables continuous experimentation: optimizing what is not perfect yet and throw away features (technical debt) that nobody really cares about. So – what are feature flags?

We got to chat with Heidi Waterhouse (@wiredferret), Developer Advocate at LaunchDarkly (https://launchdarkly.com/), who gives as a great introduction on Feature Flags, how organizations actually define a feature and why it is paramount to differentiate between Deploy and Launch. We learn how to test feature flags, what options we have to enable features for a certain group of users and how important it is to always include monitoring. IF you want to learn more about feature flags check out http://featureflags.io/. If you want to learn more about Heidi’s passion check out https://heidiwaterhouse.com/.