OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LaunchDarkly, the leading feature management platform for software development teams, today released the first-ever State of Feature Management Report. This report, developed in partnership with independent research company, Wakefield Research, outlines the results from a survey of over 450 DevOps and software development professionals across the industry. It looks at the many ways feature management is changing software development, how teams are using it to deploy code and the overall benefits of adoption.

“This report confirmed what we already knew to be true: feature management is an essential practice for software-driven businesses, and it’s a necessary practice for development teams looking to move fast without the risk of failure,” said Edith Harbaugh, CEO and co-founder of LaunchDarkly. “The findings outlined in this report demonstrate the many use cases for feature management and how development teams rely on it daily. We are excited to have a comprehensive understanding of the way our customers use feature flagging, which will help shape the future of this category.”

There were a number of notable findings from this report, demonstrating the growth of feature management, including:

• Code deployment is stressful, but feature management helps:
  • 91% of DevOps and software development professionals who do not use LaunchDarkly for feature management are stressed when deploying code, including 19% who feel very stressed.
  • Among this group, leading causes of stress include potential security issues (43%), real-life use not matching pre-launch expectations (40%), and concern about the time it takes to fix errors (38%).
  • Only 2% of LaunchDarkly customers are very stressed.
• DevOps professionals use feature flagging for a variety of use cases:
  • The top reasons those not currently using LaunchDarkly adopt feature flags include: quality control over new features (58%), quicker access to new features (46%), and more streamlined development (46%).
  • LaunchDarkly customers are overwhelmingly more motivated to use feature flags to experiment with product features (74%), simplify rollbacks (70%), and ensure better quality control over new features (68%).
  • Risk mitigation is the top reason LaunchDarkly customers are using feature flags (42%), while deployment stability remains the main priority for non-LaunchDarkly users (28%).
• Feature management is a vital industry practice:
  • 70% of LaunchDarkly customers say they are releasing several times a week or more.
  • 95% of DevOps professionals who use feature flags predict consequences for their company if they did not have adequate feature management, including loss of productivity (41%), loss of customers (38%), and impact on business reputation (38%).
    

To conduct this research, LaunchDarkly and Wakefield Research surveyed 453 software professionals, including 203 LaunchDarkly clients, to get an understanding of how and why they use feature management. Additionally, LaunchDarkly compiled data from its community of users to highlight patterns.

To learn more and download the full State of Feature Management report, visit launchdarkly.com/state-of-feature-management/.

About LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarkly isn’t just a leader in feature management — it’s the first scalable feature management platform. Feature management allows development teams to innovate faster by fundamentally transforming how software is delivered to customers. With the ability to gradually release new software features to any segment of users on any platform, DevOps teams can standardize safe releases at scale, accelerate their journey to the cloud and collaborate more effectively with business teams. Today, LaunchDarkly deploys peaks of 20 trillion feature flags each day, and that number continues to grow. Founded in 2014 in Oakland, California by Edith Harbaugh and John Kodumal, LaunchDarkly has been named on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, InfoWorld’s 2021 Technology of the Year list, and the Enterprise Tech 30 list. Learn more at launchdarkly.com.

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