Release process

Feature flags

All new features will be developed behind a feature flag. Before business acceptance, the flag will be on in preview, but off in staging and production. Pushing the master branch to production is therefore not a concern for accidentally releasing new features. This allows us to release more frequently, which should make releases less onerous.

Feature flags will be implemented as some form of environment configuration, which can be altered with fabric commands, rather than requiring puppet actions. This, and more granular feature flags, will also allow us to tune the performance platform and temporarily disable parts without needing to re-release.