What’s the Future of Feature Management?

Feature management isn’t a new idea but lately it’s a trend that’s picked up speed. Analysts like Forrester and Gartner have cited adoption of the practice as being, respectively, “hot” and “the dominant approach to experimentation in software engineering.” A study released in November found that 60% of 1,000 software and IT professionals surveyed started using feature flags only in the past year, according to the report sponsored by LaunchDarkly, the feature management platform and conducted by Wakefield Research. At the heart of feature management are feature flags, which give organizations the ability to turn features on and off, without having to re-deploy an entire app. Feature flags allow organizations test new features, and control things like access to premium versions of a customer-facing service. An overall feature management practice that includes feature flags allows organizations “to release progressively any new feature to any segment of users, any environment, any cohort of customers in a controlled manner that really reduces the risk of each release,” said Ravi Tharisayi, senior director of product marketing at LaunchDarkly, in this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast. Tharisayi talked to The New Stack’s features editor, Heather Joslyn, about the future of feature management, on the eve of the company’s latest Trajectory user conference. This episode of Makers was sponsored by LaunchDarkly.