The hard truth about feature flags in SaaS

Feature flags are essential for engineering operations, but they can add complexity, can be difficult to verify, and may even increase bugs. To avoid these issues, the conventional wisdom suggests feature flags should be short-lived, but then this requires a reliable review and cleanup process, and manual processes like filing a ticket often become inconsistent. Thus, limiting feature flags is wise, but it's unrealistic. So how do we tame this complexity? Well, we need feature management tools that do the following: support both long-lived and short-lived flags, assign flag ownership, allow metadata and grouping creation, set policies like automatic removal or mandatory metadata, and enable easy flag relationships. Now, these are just a few ideas for getting feature flag management under control. Let us know your ideas in the comments below.