feature flag

At a basic level, feature flags take the form of simple conditionals (e.g., if-else statements) that determine the code path that will be executed. Feature flags determine at runtime which portions of code are executed. This lets you deploy new features without making them visible to users, or you can make features visible only to specific subsets of users and environments.

Feature Flags—What Are Those? Uses, Benefits & Best Practices | LaunchDarkly LaunchDarkly 2025

When I worked at a big tech company, there was a massive push to get all developers using feature flags and experimentation to improve the product’s uptime and increase customer trust (there had been a lot of outages and customers were churning due to this).

To feature flag or to not feature flag? 2026