In response to increasingly constrained resources and ever-heightening developer expectations, LaunchDarkly has unveiled the latest enhancements set to revolutionize its platform. With DevOps playing a pivotal role in delivering robust software swiftly, the gap between maintaining service quality and remaining competitive has never been more palpable. LaunchDarkly steps into the fray with novel solutions that could alter the future of DevOps.
Under the banner of 'the next frontier of DevOps', LaunchDarkly's recent Galaxy ’23 event threw a spotlight on the increasingly complex challenges faced by IT departments and developers. Different processes must often be fused to tackle evolving problems, resulting in laborious work and mounting frustration.
According to Cody DeArkland, Director of Developer Experience at LaunchDarkly, the motivation behind this platform evolution can be condensed into addressing key issues, such as the aforementioned complexities in process integration and the challenges they pose for feature release.
One such groundbreaking feature is the Release Assistant, aimed at linking the spheres of software and customer experience. As a release pipeline tool, the Release Assistant provides a set of guidelines for successful feature implementation across a variety of environments. Furthermore, this feature adds an additional layer of governance and automation to the process.
Environments within this process have previously been considered as separate entities, with complex automation required to integrate them. The Release Assistant addresses this, providing a unified viewpoint within the platform itself that eliminates the need for individual administration.
Despite meticulous adherence to industry's best practices, the inevitability of bugs can never be ruled out. Here comes into play another early access tool, Release Guardian, with the primary function to monitor metrics in the release context and detect potential issues that might get overlooked amidst the clutter of comprehensive metrics.
Derived from LaunchDarkly's progressive release platform, the Release Guardian brings feature innovations in the form of real-time metric and regression monitoring through active flag change monitoring.
LaunchDarkly's platform enhancements include more than just the Release Assistant and Release Guardian. It rolls out the Migration Assistant, aiming to assist organizations in modernizing their technology stacks, controlling migration through phased rollouts, and ensuring safety, predictability, and visibility.
A feature enhancement to its Segment Model called Segment Builder is another addition to this series of updates. The tool attempts to make delivery of the right experiences to the right audiences more swift and effortless.
The Funnel Experiments feature empowers developers to drive data-informed product updates by grouping experiment metrics for maximum effectiveness. Additionally, the Mobile Lifecycle Assistant optimizes application versions.
The Engineering Insights Hub consolidates metrics into a single entity, thereby streamlining and boosting the efficiency of engineering efforts.
The recently unveiled enhancements add the platform to the ever-expanding list of valuable tools for modern developers. This new frontier of DevOps promises to ease the burden on developers, allowing a smooth transition to a more efficient development process.
