Feature flags can be powerful tools in mitigating risk in your development cycle — _if you use them correctly_. Failing to do so can have enormous consequences for yourself and your business. In 2012 one improperly deployed feature flag sent a $365 million company into bankruptcy in 45 minutes. So let’s talk about feature flags, specifically in how they can help us with intentional deployment. Feature flags give us a high degree of control over the features we release — but what ensures we have a high degree of control over our feature flags?     In this talk, I’ll go over the best practices which will make your feature flagging program a success. The humble Feature Flag can transform into many different things: release toggle, experiment, kill switch, permissioning and more. I’ll talk briefly about the possibilities Feature Flags open up, and then describe how to use best practices of visibility and accountability to align those different flags into a cohesive feature flagging system.     After this talk, you’ll know what best practices make a successful feature flagging program, and be able to implement them into your current solution to deploy faster and with less risk.