Coming Soon: Feature Flags - From Concept To Cultural Revolution
In my tenure as a co-founder and principal engineer at InVision, I went from never having heard of "Feature Flags" (aka "feature toggles" aka "feature switches"); to seeing them become widely adopted by our engineering team; to witnessing a complete cultural revolution in regard to how our company approached product development. For me, feature flags are as transformational as databases — they are as important as both logs and metrics. I cannot imagine creating another product without them.
I believe that I have a perspective worth sharing. I want to help people see the magic that I see. I want to help teams deliver value to their customers with love and empathy and without fear. As such, I'm going to try my hand at writing a book on the matter. This book will be highly opinionated; and will be colored by my own hands-on experience in seeing what works and what doesn't work.
This book is very much a work in progress! If you want to know more about the progress, you can subscribe for updates on the book's mini-site:
https://featureflagsbook.com/ →
I don't anticipate this book being very long. Feature flags are a relatively simple concept that provides massive leverage. I'm hoping to get this done rather quickly.
Reader Comments
I think it's great that you're writing a book. The wife wrote a couple, I co-wrote one with her. (Non-technical content.) It's very rewarding! Maybe not a path to riches, but I don't think that's always a goal!
@Will,
Yeah, I don't expect this to be a "money" thing. I'm not even entirely sure if I want to charge for it (though, much that contention is tied up in impostor syndrome). I figured I just need to start writing and then see how it ends up feeling. Right now, I'm still in the bulleted-lists / brain-storming mode.
Good luck! You may find this an interesting read:
https://adamwathan.me/the-book-launch-that-let-me-quit-my-job/
@Andrew,
Thanks for the link -- will take a look. I did read Adam's Refactoring UI book (which is a great book, by the way). I think this might be the same book, not sure. Anyway, Adam clearly knows what he's doing - I'll be sure to glean as much information as I can from him!
I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts Ben
Mike
I've followed your blog for a long time, love the working code podcast, and am stoked to read the book. Your thoughts on feature flags have opened my eyes to new possibilities already. I hope writing it is a great experience for you!
@Mike, @Jacob,
Thank you for the positive encouragement! I really hope that I'm able to take the love that I have for feature flags and communicate that in the book.
@All,
I'm super excited to announce that I have an EARLY ACCESS version of the book available. This is a PDF version, and is a bit rough around the edges. But, the content is there and it's 50% off. If you get the early access version, you'll automatically get access to future versions as well.
Check it out at https://featureflagsbook.com/
Oh man, I can't wait to get back to blogging again 😂 😂
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