Solution Discovery over Feature Toggling with Built-in Abstraction in OutSystems

Technology is evolving rapidly, so are the users’ needs and requirements. Software companies need to be competitive and deliver new versions of their product at a fast pace. That is why the demand for continuous integration and continuous delivery is increasing. Feature toggling is one of the techniques used to reduce the development cycle time. By including toggles in their code, developers can isolate code related to the new features under development and prevent it from being executed. Toggling allows the delivery of code with incomplete features without impacting the remaining functionalities.Feature toggling not only helps with the process of continuous integration and continuous delivery but also allows more control over the features. By implementing toggles, developers can control if a feature is visible and to whom. This gives access to a new world of possibilities, from progressive rollouts to business-directed user targeting. However, toggling must be used with caution, as it increases code complexity and technical debt.There is yet no solution at OutSystems for feature toggling that helps developers introduce this technique seamlessly into their workflow, thus toggling is rarely used. The goal of this work is to support feature toggling in the OutSystems platform, given developers easy access to the advantages inherent to this technique, without worrying about the technical debt involved. This work explores possible solutions to be adopted, as well as its strengths and challenges, focusing on reducing effort and maintaining a higher abstraction level, characteristic of low-code languages. Solutions proposed in this discovery work can also be adapted and replicated in other low-code development platforms.