Chapter 1: Introduction to Feature Management with LaunchDarkly

Welcome to this journey of feature management discovery. Throughout 13 chapters, we will explore what feature management is and learn how to use LaunchDarkly to get the most out of it. Feature management is the name given to the process of changing the elements of a system without making changes to an application's code base. This is not a new concept. However, there are modern ways to achieve feature management, and LaunchDarkly is a tool that enables our teams to make changes at runtime for specific applications, users, or all customers.

Feature management and LaunchDarkly empower us to change systems quickly, easily, and without risk to help deliver new features, deal with service incidents, and migrate systems.

In this chapter, I will introduce you to, and briefly explain, the modern software development landscape with regard to best practices for DevOps and robust Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and processes. Next, we will look at where feature management fits within this practice and how it can be embedded effectively and efficiently within CI/CD processes.

This context will lay the groundwork for this book to explain what feature management is, how best to use LaunchDarkly, and what can be achieved by adopting an approach to building software that relies on feature management.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Understanding modern software development
• Where does feature management come from?
• Feature management within CI/CD

By the end of this chapter, you will have a better understanding of how feature management fits within a modern approach to software delivery and how it can improve good DevOps and CI/CD practices.