Today's software companies are trying to move faster than ever before. Feature flagging is a way for to reduce risk, increase the amount of visibility, and improve your ability to respond to change. Learn how you can begin utilizing feature flagging effectively, and how Atlassian flags with LaunchDarkly to ship software daily.

1. TIM WONG | PRINCIPAL TAM | LAUNCHDARKLY | @TWONG
Ship Faster, Reduce Risk, and
Build Scale with Feature Flags
Ship Faster Reduce Risk
Build Scale Feature Flags

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4. #TODO: Need a better picture, this is too
political
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6. `
Release Deploy
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7. =
Change
7
Release Deploy

8. Release
Deploy
Deliver Value
Reduce risk
8

9. Release
Deploy when it’s convenient
when it’s ready
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10. What is a feature flag?
CONTEXT
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11. A decision point in code
whose behavior can vary
during runtime based on
external input
FEATURE FLAGS ARE
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12. Fancy IF Statement
FEATURE FLAGS ARE
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13. doSomeThing();
doAlternateSomeThings();
13

14. doSomeThing();
doAlternateSomeThings();
if (NewFeatureEnabled()) {
}
else {
}
14

15. doSomeThing();
doAlternateSomeThings();
if (NewFeatureEnabled()) {
}
else {
}
Feature flag
Old behavior
New behavior
15

16. doSomeThing();
doAlternateSomeThings();
if (NewFeatureEnabled()) {
}
else {
}
Feature flag
Old behavior
New behavior
FalseTrue
16

17. if (NewFeatureEnabled()) {
Shameless plug!
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18. #deadhorse
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#deadhorse

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#deadhorse

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#deadhorse

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#deadhorse

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#deadhorse

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#deadhorse

25. Time for some sweet sweet
usecases
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#deadhorse

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#deadhorseLife with a feature flag

28. New Feature
Operational Risk
28
#deadhorseLife with a feature flag

29. Functional Risk
29
#deadhorseLife with a feature flag
New Feature

30. Functional Risk
30
#deadhorseLife with a feature flag
New Feature

31. Kill Switch
Setting the routing of a
flag to 0% to “remove”
a feature
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functionaloperational
THE PUNCHLINE

33. `
IF statements
are very useful
#summit17
OH @LaunchDarkly
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34. # dead horse
New Feature
5%
34
Life with a feature flag

35. Canary Launch
Shipping to a small
random subset before
rolling the change to
100%
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36. ReleaseDeploy !=
EveryoneExperience !=

37. Feature Flags
allow you to decouple
dependencies
Key concept!
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38. ABC
-123
38
Master

39. ABC
-123
39
Master
ABC-344-Refactor UserSearch

40. ABC
-123
ABC
-234
Master
ABC
-245
ABC-344-Refactor UserSearch
ABC-345-Create v2 UI Elements
#dependencyhell #coderot40

41. ABC
-123
ABC
-234
ABC
-245
ABC
-345
ABC-345
41 #dependencyhell #coderot
Master
ABC-344-Refactor UserSearch
Life with a feature flag

42. We’re looking to move from
legacy monolith systems to
microservices
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No MeowMeows allowed!

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Life with a feature flag

49. Patrick Kaeding
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http://go.launchdarkly.com/dm

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#dependencyhell

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Shameless plug!
53

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http://go.launchdarkly.com/cleaningup

55. Dashboard
One central dashboard to manage the lifecycle of your features
from local development, to QA, to production.
Fine-Grain Targeting
Release features to users through percentage rollouts and
custom targeting rules
Audit Logging
Real-time visibility into every feature flag change in your
system
Custom Roles
Create flexible policies for access controls in LaunchDarkly
and allow extended teams to control releases
Streaming Architecture
LaunchDarkly uses streaming architecture to serve feature
flags in microseconds without making remote requests. All
flags are served located and backed up by two layers of
globally distributed CDNs.
Processing 10 billion+ flag requests daily

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59. TIM WONG | PRINCIPAL TAM | LAUNCHDARKLY
Ship Faster, Reduce Risk, and
Build Scale with Feature Flags
Ship Faster Reduce Risk
Build Scale Feature Flags

60. Ship Faster
Reduce Risk
Build Scale
Feature Flags
?
60

61. Feature Flags
allow you to decouple
dependencies
Key concept!
61

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Faster != Risk
Release != Deploy
Experience != Everyone
Scale != Slower

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TIM WONG | PRINCIPAL TAM | LAUNCHDARKLY | @TWONG
Come visit me at the booth!
I have swag!
and I don’t want to take it home…