Projects and environments
Map your applications and deployment environments to LaunchDarkly projects and environments. The key principle: fewer is better.
Quick answers
How many projects do I need? Start with one project per product or tightly coupled set of services. Only create separate projects when teams need complete independence.
How many environments do I need? Most organizations need 2-3 environments: Development, Staging, and Production. Use targeting rules to handle multiple deployment environments within these.
Data model
LaunchDarkly organizes feature flags using a hierarchical structure:
- Projects contain feature flags and environments
- Feature flags exist at the project level in all environments of that project
- Environments contain the targeting rules for each flag
- SDKs connect to a single environment and receive the state of every flag for that environment
Applications exist as a top-level resource outside of projects.
Key concepts
Projects group related applications that need to coordinate releases:
- Share feature flags across all applications in the project
- Enable prerequisites and approvals for coordinated launches
- Define who can access and modify flags
Environments represent stages in your development lifecycle:
- Each has its own targeting rules and approval workflows
- SDKs connect to one environment at a time
- Use targeting rules to consolidate multiple deployment environments
Next steps
- Learn how to map applications to projects
- Learn how to map deployment environments to LaunchDarkly environments