Emily Clarke

Benefits of Feature Toggles

Including features in your software can be a great benefit to users. Whether in the development stage or further along in the product's life cycle, adding new features usually means you're able to give customers what they want and make products more profitable.

Unfortunately, software developers often have to spend long hours adding and removing features by hand through code. In some cases, adding or removing a feature means changing core code elements that may end up breaking something further down the line. All of this creates a huge issue for development teams, and it can even make you less inclined to use the add-in feature model.

Thankfully, feature flags, sometimes known as feature toggles, can help. Below are some of the main benefits of using feature toggles to consider for your next project:

Feature Toggles Don't Modify Code

When you incorporate feature toggles or flags into the design of your software, you can add and remove features without changing code when turning features on and off. In most cases, creating a simple UI with on-screen toggle switches can be enough for feature flag management. This means you can test features without the fear of having to spend days and weeks changing and fixing code.

Feature Flags Provide Access to More Team Members

Another benefit of using feature activation toggles is that more team members can be provided with access to controls. This assists in feature flag management as it can allow you to select certain team members to entrust with turning features on and off as needed, based on user feedback and performance metrics analysis.

Instead of being the only one responsible for making changes to product features, your team can then handle these requests to expedite the process. This is particularly important if a feature begins causing major issues for users, and developers aren't available to immediately address the problem.

If an app or piece of desktop software has backend feature flags embedded, people you've given access to can turn the buggy feature off until the problem can be addressed. This not only benefits your team but also benefits the user.

Author Resource:-

Emily Clarke writes about A/B testing management, benefits and software development strategy. You can find her thoughts at software release management blog.