Feature Flags Book: Track Actions, Not Feature Flag State

Data scientists and growth teams love to track everything. The assumption being that with enough data, user behaviors can be predicted and then manipulated. As such, when feature flags are introduced to an application, some people will want feature flag state to be included in the existing analytics data.

In my experience, this is a bad idea. For starters, it adds even more complexity to the code, especially if tracking happens in both the front-end and the back-end context. But, more than that, tracking feature flag state cuts against the grain of a feature flag's expected life-cycle.

In 2023, I published a book titled, "Feature Flags: Transform Your Product Development Workflow". This book contains everything that I've learned over the last 7 years about integrating feature flags into my product development. But, a static book can only take you so far. In an effort to make the book more interactive, I've created a series of blog posts—one per chapter—that provide a place in which the readers and I can discuss the content. You can purchase the book and / or read a preview of each chapter on the book's mini-site. Feel free to leave a question or a comment down below.

• Of Outages And Incidents
• The Status Quo
• Feature Flags, An Introduction
• Key Terms And Concepts
• Going Deep On Feature Flag Targeting
• The User Experience (UX) Of Feature Flag Targeting
• Types Of Feature Flags
• Life-Cycle Of A Feature Flag
• Use Cases
• Server-Side vs. Client-Side
• Bridging The Sophistication Gap
• Life Without Automated Testing
• Ownership Boundaries
• The Hidden Cost Of Feature Flags
• Not Everything Can Be Feature Flagged
• Build vs. Buy
• Track Actions, Not Feature Flag State
• Logs, Metrics, And Feature Flags
• Transforming Your Company Culture
• People Like Us Do Things Like This
• Building Inclusive Products
• An Opinionated Guide To Pull Requests (PRs)
• Removing The Cost Of Context Switching
• Measuring Team Productivity
• Increasing Agility With Dynamic Code
• Product Release vs. Marketing Release
• Getting From No To Yes
• What If I Can Only Deploy Every 2 Weeks?
• I Eat, I Sleep, I Feature Flag

Short link: https://bennadel.com/4556