The first time I hit the proverbial "deploy button" as a software engineer, I was anything but calm.

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While we were confident in our tests, we always feared, "What if something goes wrong?" or "What if we missed a critical test case?"
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This first deployment went fine, but over the past decade, I've had my fair share of botched deployments or the need to rollback quickly. It's not a fun place to be in.

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During that time, I've learned a lot about mitigating risks in deployments and the software development process in general. These techniques range from asking better questions during requirements gathering, focusing on incremental development, and utilizing tools like linters and static analysis.

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One technique rises to the top for me: feature flags. Feature flags are a tried and true tactic that, when used with discipline, have massive benefits to your development process.
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Team-Building Exercise

This week's team-building exercise goes beyond feature flags to the root of my "What's the Point?" series: what are some practices you'd like to adopt on your team in 2025?
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I know we are well into the year at this point and many goals and OKRs have been finalized. If you've got that all squared away don't let my newsletter make you question those goals!
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But if you are still trying to iron them out or think you could benefit from an extra one, consider taking a broader look at how your team ships code to production and ask "What could we do better?"
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For some teams, feature flagging might be a great start (we are focusing on that on my team this year). For others, maybe you still haven't gotten everyone to write unit tests and embrace continuous integration. Or maybe still you've yet to rely on metrics and observability.

Whatever the next best step is for your team, start charting a path toward adopting some of these best practices to help your team focus on building better and better software.

Here are some more resources from me to help you build better teams!​

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