Unleashing Deploy Velocity with Feature Flags

A lot of development teams have built out fully automated CI/CD pipelines to deliver code to production fast! Then you quickly discover that the new bottleneck in delivering features is their existence in longlived feature branches and no true CI is actually happening. This problem compounds as you start spinning up microservices and building features across your multirepo architecture and coordinating some ultrafancy release schedule so it all deploys together. Feature flags provide you the mechanism to reclaim control of the release of your features and get back to shortlived branches with true CI. However, what you're not told about feature flags in those simple “if/else” getting started demos is that there is an upfront cost to your development time, additional complexities, and some pitfalls to be careful of as you begin expanding feature flag usage to the organization. If you know how to navigate these complexities you will start to unleash true velocity across your teams.

In this talk, we'll get started with some of the feature flagging basics before quickly moving into some practical feature flagging examples that demonstrate its usage beyond the basic scenarios as we talk about UI, API, operations, migrations, and experimentation. We will explore some of the hard questions around “architecting feature flags” for your organization.

About Travis Gosselin

Travis is a Distinguished Software Engineer at SPS Commerce, the world's largest retail network, where he leads innovation, drives meaningful change, and amplifies team productivity. With a passion for technology and a talent for simplifying complex architectures, Travis focuses on creating seamless Developer Experiences and fostering high-performing teams. A seasoned speaker, architect, and blogger, he thrives on sharing insights, exploring emerging technologies, and championing impactful development practices.

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