Coordinating releases
Coordinate releases across applications and teams using LaunchDarkly feature flags. These strategies enable autonomous teams to manage dependent releases with minimal overhead.
Overview
When multiple applications or teams need to coordinate releases, LaunchDarkly provides several strategies to manage dependencies without requiring synchronous communication or manual coordination.
Each coordination strategy describes:
- What people need to do: How teams work in LaunchDarkly (create flags, configure approvals, grant permissions)
- What technical setup is required: How developers implement the coordination (evaluate flags, pass metadata, handle dependencies)
Coordination strategies
Prerequisite flags
Use prerequisite flags when applications share a LaunchDarkly project and need to coordinate releases.
Best for:
- Tightly coupled applications and services
- Teams that share a project
- Large initiatives with multiple dependent releases
- Frontend and backend components that must be released together
To learn more, read Prerequisite flags.
Request metadata
Use request metadata when services communicate via APIs and need to manage breaking changes or versioning.
Best for:
- API services with external consumers
- Microservices communicating via HTTP or RPC
- Applications that need to maintain backward compatibility
- Services in separate projects
To learn more, read Request metadata.
Delegated authority
Use delegated authority when cross-functional teams need to manage flags across multiple projects.
Best for:
- Cross-functional collaboration with customer success, support, or sales teams
- Database administrators managing schema migrations
- Security engineers managing security features
- Teams that need to control flags in projects they do not own
To learn more, read Delegated authority.
Choosing a strategy
Use this guide to select the appropriate coordination strategy:
| Scenario | Strategy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend and backend for the same product | Prerequisite flags | Same project, tightly coupled |
| API with third-party consumers | Request metadata | Different projects, version management |
| Multiple microservices, same product | Prerequisite flags or Request metadata | Depends on coupling and API design |
| Customer success managing early access | Delegated authority | Cross-functional collaboration |
| Database team managing migrations | Delegated authority | Cross-project coordination |
Combining strategies
Strategies can be combined for complex scenarios:
Delegated authority with prerequisites:
Grant customer success teams permission to manage prerequisite flags that control early access programs across multiple applications.
Request metadata with delegated authority:
Allow API consumers to request custom targeting rules for their specific API versions or client configurations.
Project architecture considerations
Coordination strategy selection affects project architecture decisions:
- Applications using prerequisite flags should share a project
- Applications using request metadata or delegated authority can be in separate projects
- Applications in the same project have access to all coordination strategies
To learn more about project architecture, read Projects and environments.