Releasing successful software features is essential for growth and competitive differentiation. It’s why today’s product development teams are leaning on new techniques like feature management to boost their release cadence and quality. In doing so, they’re watching their rollouts to see how they impact user experience and business outcomes. Some teams are even experimenting with ideas behind feature flags to see what works best.
As feature management and experimentation grows, we were curious about where the industry stands across this emerging category. Who’s using feature management and experimentation tools and where? What are today’s top priorities, and do front-line engineers agree with senior management? How frequently do development teams actually release new features?
To answer these pressing questions, we conducted a survey of 353 software development professionals. Respondents came from a variety of staff and leadership roles including software engineers, developers, and product managers. The survey also represented companies from a range of industries: healthcare, finance, and technology to name a few. The results are now live. You can download The Feature Management Impact Report here.
“Despite strong interest in feature management and experimentation, not all organizations have embraced these practices. Whether the issue is inertia or immaturity in feature management and experimentation, it is time to get serious, even if adoption lags behind enthusiasm.”
From the Feature Management Impact Report
Disparities between enthusiasm and adoption, controversies between engineers and leadership, release opportunities for today and tomorrow–the report uncovered many different things.
Here’s a quick snapshot:
A Few Key Discoveries
Category Awareness & Enthusiasm Is High
Overall, category awareness is high and so is the understanding of the benefits of feature management. In fact, 92% of respondents either agree or completely agree that software feature management is critical to developing and releasing successful digital experiences.
Success Is Low, So Is Adoption
A limited number of respondents are already using feature management tools. For those who do, they rarely feel successful with the emerging practice. Specifically, only 16% of respondents said they were successful with feature management. The disparity between high enthusiasm and low adoption is a notable theme in the report.
Orgs Want to Improve Their Releases But Disagree About How to Do It
Organizations are eager to improve their software releases. Specifically, they want to accelerate release cadence, up their release quality, and control the reliability of every rollout. But how do they prioritize this successfully? That depends on who you’re talking to. For engineering leadership, they believe in using baseline data to prioritize their decisions. Conversely, their staff tends to think pinpointing the negative impact of software features is a higher priority.
Fear of Failure Is Holding Teams Back
The perception around taking risks for the sake of innovation was not a positive one. What we discovered was a shared fear across the industry. In fact, 1 in 10 know devs who lost their job due to a failed software release. As a result, this is keeping product development teams unable to move forward with confidence.
Get All the Facts About Feature Management Impact
Benchmark your feature releases against the industry by reading The Feature Management Impact Report today. You can download it here.
Switch It On With Split
The Split Feature Data Platform™ gives you the confidence to move fast without breaking things. Set up feature flags and safely deploy to production, controlling who sees which features and when. Connect every flag to contextual data, so you can know if your features are making things better or worse and act without hesitation. Effortlessly conduct feature experiments like A/B tests without slowing down. Whether you’re looking to increase your releases, to decrease your MTTR, or to ignite your dev team without burning them out–Split is both a feature management platform and partnership to revolutionize the way the work gets done. Schedule a demo to learn more.
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