How feature flags improve the DORA metrics
Published in
1 min readMar 26, 2022
Idea
Here’s how feature flags improve the DORA metrics:
- Feature flags improve deployment frequency because you can deploy any time. Even if there is unfinished code in the codebase, it will be hidden behind a feature flag. The main branch is always deployable.
- Feature flags improve lead time because a change can be deployed even if it’s not finished, yet, to gather feedback from key users.
- Feature flags improve the mean time to restore because you can revert a problematic change by just disabling the corresponding feature flag.
- Feature flags improve change failure rate because they decouple the risk of deployment with the risk of change. A deployment no longer fails and has to be rolled back because of bad features. The deployment is successful even if you have shipped a bad change because you can disable the bad change any time by flipping a feature flag.
How to implement
We identify the use cases first then implement for each use case.
