A toggle is a switch that allows users to easily change between two settings or modes. It’s often used in technology, computing, and programming to provide users with a way to control their experience. In everyday life, we use toggles to turn on and off lights, set alarms and timers, and change our default browser or search engine. Feature toggles are a powerful tool that allow you to introduce new features into your product without impacting existing users. By separating changes to the user experience from the core codebase, you can iterate and improve new features without risking any downtime or lost revenue for your customers.
Using feature toggles can significantly accelerate development and testing cycles and help you release software faster. By hiding features behind toggles you can enable your team to develop and test new functionality on a separate branch or in a pull request before they need to be integrated into trunk code. This helps you support newer agile approaches and avoid the lengthy back-and-forth between branches that you might have to go through with more traditional waterfall development processes.
One of the most important aspects of toggle configuration is how your team manages them. Toggle configuration can be stored in a variety of ways, but it’s best to move away from static files when possible. Managing toggle configuration via files quickly becomes cumbersome at scale, and it’s difficult to ensure consistency across all servers. Instead, many teams opt to store their toggle configuration in some type of centralized repository (e.g., an existing application DB) and build out an admin UI that lets product managers, testers, and other stakeholders view and modify the toggle’s current state.
When creating a toggle, be sure to clearly label it with a description of what will happen when the control is activated or deactivated. It’s also a good idea to include a visual cue, such as a slider or moving icon, that makes the toggle’s state obvious to your users. This can help reduce confusion and prevent users from activating a setting that will disrupt their workflows or cause other problems.
The final aspect of a great toggle is its accessibility. Most developers don’t think about accessibility when implementing toggles, but it is very important to make sure your toggles are accessible for everyone. For example, using green and red as toggle states is inaccessible to people with color blindness. Luckily, there are plenty of tools available to check that your toggles are fully accessible.
There are four general categories of Feature Toggles that you should manage differently: Champagne Brunch, Canary Release, Permissioning Toggle, and Experiment Toggle. Each of these has its own benefits and drawbacks, but all four are a powerful tool for iterating and improving your product. The key is to choose the right tool for the job, and then to use it responsibly. By following these tips, you can create a feature toggle system that will work for your product and your team.
