Why FeatureOps Might Be the Future of Software Delivery

Sep 14, 2025

Egil Østhus, founder of Unleash, delves into the innovative concept of FeatureOps, which separates deployment from user experiences, allowing for controlled rollouts and rapid feedback. He highlights how this approach reduces risk while enhancing collaboration between engineering and business teams. Egil discusses real-world successes where companies transitioned from blame to shared ownership, leveraging gradual exposure instead of complete rollbacks. The conversation also touches on the balance of AI in coding and the importance of cultivating a curious mindset in tech education.

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INSIGHT

Decouple Deployment From Release

Feature management decouples deploying code from releasing features so you can control runtime exposure.
This reduces risk by letting teams enable features only for selected users in production.

ADVICE

Adopt FeatureOps Pillars

Use gradual rollouts, experimentation, surgical rollback, lifecycle cleanup, and governance as pillars of FeatureOps.
Apply these to balance speed, stability, and control while keeping stakeholders aligned.

ADVICE

Remove Flags After They Serve

Clean up feature flags and unused code paths after rollout to avoid long-term complexity and risk.
Enforce lifecycle management so flags don't become technical debt.

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I invited Egil Østhus to unpack a simple idea that tends to get lost in release day pressure. DevOps gets code to production quickly, but users experience features, not pipelines. Egil is the founder of Unleash, an open source feature management platform with close to 30 million downloads, and he argues that the next step is FeatureOps. It is a mindset and a set of practices that separate deployment from release, so teams can place code in production, light it up for a small cohort, learn, and only then scale out with confidence.

Here is the thing. Controlled rollouts, clear telemetry, and fast rollback reduce risk without slowing teams down. Egil explains how FeatureOps connects engineering effort to business outcomes through gradual exposure, full stack experimentation, and what he calls surgical rollback. Instead of ripping out an entire release when one part misbehaves, teams can disable the offending capability and keep the rest of the value in place. It sounds straightforward because it is, and that is the point. Less drama, more learning, better results.

We also talk about culture. When releases repeatedly disappoint, trust between product and engineering frays. Egil shares examples where Unleash helped a hardware and software company move from blame to shared ownership by making rollout plans visible and collaborative. Another client, an ERP vendor, discovered that early feedback from a small group of users allowed them to ship a leaner version that met the need without months of extra scope. That is how FeatureOps saves money and tempers expectations while still delighting customers.

AI enters the story too. Code is shipping faster, but reliability can wobble when autogenerated changes move through pipelines. Egil sees feature management as a practical control plane for this new reality. Feature flags provide a real time safety net and, if needed, a kill switch for AI powered functionality. Teams can keep experimenting while protecting users and brand equity.

If you want to move beyond release day roulette, this episode offers a practical playbook. We cover privacy first design, open source flexibility, and why metadata from FeatureOps will help leaders study how their organizations truly build. To learn more, visit getunleash.io or search for Unleash in your favorite tool, then tell me how you plan to measure your next rollout’s impact.

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