If you’ve been reading about feature flags then I’m sure you’re convinced of the power and value they provide. Since development is mostly a team effort, you may be wondering how to manage a feature flag within a team, regardless of size, so one developer’s work doesn’t affect another’s. Well, in this article, we discuss exactly this issue and offer two solutions, depending on the size of your team.
Let's say your team has developed a new feature update and is planning to release it to the public. There can be some uncertainty and risk because it is hard to predict how users will react to the change. Will the new update have a negative impact and drive users away from the app? The best way to know for sure is to adopt an A/B testing approach by releasing it to a subset of users to measure its impact prior to making a full deployment. This gives you enough room to uncover bugs and refine the feature without disrupting the experience for everyone.
When it comes to smooth deployment and roll-out of new features in software products, feature flags play a critical role. Across software development workflows like agile, they are becoming essential. I have found that using them drastically reduced the risk of adversely affecting user experience since they enable me to quickly disable a new feature if unintentional bugs are discovered.
Knowing up front whether a new feature will improve or worsen user experience can be a challenging decision. If we don't adopt the proper mechanisms and processes to test new features we stand a high risk of introducing new bugs. By incorporating A/B testing into our feature release workflow, we can minimize these situations by testing the new feature with a small sample of users before deploying it.
Being so busy in between releasing new features and achieving significant milestones, we tend to forget how much we've got done up until that point. As such, our active customers have enjoyed our product, but they also continue to find greater value in it as their subscriptions grow.
When you take your software products offline to add new features, users can become frustrated, especially if their livelihood depends on it. With a new feature, there is always the risk of introducing unanticipated bugs. By incorporating feature flagging into our software release workflow, we can prevent and even lessen these situations.
React Native is a framework created by Facebook that simplifies development of cross-platform mobile applications. In a nutshell, React Native code is automatically translated to native code for both Android and iOS. It's no wonder that this framework is becoming increasingly popular among developers. In this article, we’re going to explore how to use feature flags in this environment so you have all the tools necessary for great mobile development.
Most software features are designed and tested in-house before making their way into the hands of users. While this is somewhat of a standard approach in feature deployments, it may cause user experience issues. This is because the majority of end users are not tech-savvy and aren't thinking the way engineers do.
Adopting an A/B testing approach prior to making a final feature deployment decision can prevent or lessen the risk of interfering and affecting user experience. Features can be tested and released to a subset of end users initially where the current metrics can be recorded and compared to a previous benchmark. As a result, developers may choose to improve or cancel the feature altogether without the risk of blindly affecting the entire user base.
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do at ConfigCat. We take pride in knowing customer satisfaction is our top priority because we know that many of our competitors do not place the same value on customer experience as we do.
You asked. We listened!
We're excited to announce that ConfigCat now has an official React SDK.🥳🎉 The React SDK has been a highly requested feature by our customers, and we're proud to knock it off our checklist. The React SDK provides customers with a more modern, first-class React integration support when integrating ConfigCat with their React applications. We hope our customers share our enthusiasm for it.
Software development can be challenging, but releasing new features shouldn't be. A feature deployment process can be time-consuming and error-prone without a proper feature flagging system. To me, it should be a fundamental part of the developer's toolbox because it lowers the risk of bugs and complications.
