Feature toggles (sometimes referred to as feature flags) are an engineering practice aiming to control application behavior without the need to deploy a code change. The behaviors that toggles can affect range from hiding under development features, limited feature release (canary) to a subset of users, or used to switch to fallback implementation in the event of a system issue, and more.

Continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment implementations cover a wide range of automation possibilities for your software. This article will provide an overview of these three principles, the benefits they can bring to your engineering efficiency, and potential challenges.

The first half of this 2-part series highlighted why ongoing maintenance is vital for the health of large-scale enterprise systems, especially heading into a substantial upgrade or replacement project as the system reaches end-of-life. We inverted the problem and started describing a recipe for implementing the worst “best” possible enterprise system upgrade project a business could ever want.

Enterprise software delivery for large-scale projects is complex. It requires substantial time and financial resources to complete, whereas a single system can cost millions of dollars and take years to deliver.