Ship new features quickly while minimizing bugs with these Feature Flag integrations

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At the core of Atlassian Open DevOps is a mission to help teams ship quality software faster through collaborative experiences.

But shipping software quickly is only as valuable as the quality and stability of the feature. So how do you mitigate the risk of pushing new features out to your users?

Feature Flags approach software development through a small-batch approach, gradually rolling out a new feature to a subset of users instead of all users at once. If during that gradual roll-out a bug is detected, it’s a lot easier to roll it back than if it had been deployed to your entire user base.

How to get started with Feature Flags

Before shipping your first feature, it’s important to make sure you have the proper processes and governance in place so teams across the organization are aware of what features are being shipped, when, and to which users.

Integrating a feature flag tool with Jira issues keeps everyone on the same page and creates full transparency into a feature’s roll-out status.

Learn more about Atlassian’s Feature Flag partners

Split for Jira

• Connect feature flags to Jira issues to easily track flag and roll-out status under issue details

• View outstanding Jira issues in Split to minimize context-switching

• Jira issues reflect the flag configuration (on/off) and roll-out status (percentage roll-out or number of targeting rules)
  
  

Learn more and install the integration here

LaunchDarkly for Jira

• Start the creation of a new feature flag right from the Jira new issue screen

• Roll out a feature to a percentage of users

• Associate feature flags with Jira issues and LaunchDarkly custom properties

Learn more and install the integration here

Frequently asked questions about Feature Flags

What are some use cases for feature flags?

• Product Testing - If you’re not sure whether or not a new feature is valuable, you can test it with a set of users and get their feedback first

• A/B Testing - Feature flags can be used to turn a feature on/off and test different experiences for subsets of users before deploying to everyone

• Continuous Deployment (CD) - CD relies on automated testing, so feature flags allow for monitoring user behavior and automatically rolling out or rolling back a feature

What team(s) should manage feature flags?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to feature flags. At Atlassian, we use feature flags to control backend changes (performance optimizations that developers control), but there are also use cases where giving support teams the ability to toggle features on/off makes sense.

How do you establish proper feature flag governance?

There is a lifecycle to feature flags. Each is a tiny bit of technical debt, but that debt must be repaid by removing them after the feature has become "normal." Be sure to manage the "work in progress" for feature flags: have a practice to regularly review and remove when you can.

If you want to toggle a feature flag for a certain percentage of customers, how do you decide which customers get that feature?

You can toggle based on any variable you want to segment on like region, demographic, customer profile, etc.

With the new Jira toolchain page, you can customize your DevOps toolchain to fit your team’s needs. There are dozens of integrations available, from Plan to Build to Test and Deploy, so you can fill any gaps in your toolchain with ease.

Get better insight into the tools your team is already using and discover new ones to add to your toolchain here!