Reducing Recovery Time with Automated Rollbacks

When we first started using feature flags, our Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR) for production incidents was significant. Today, with automated rollbacks, we've reduced that dramatically.

The Problem

Our traditional incident response process looked like this: - Alert fires (5 minutes to notice) - Engineer investigates (15-20 minutes) - Decision to rollback (5 minutes of discussion) - Manual rollback process (10-15 minutes) - Verification (5-10 minutes)

The Solution

We implemented Feature Beam's automated rollback system with the following configuration: - Real-time error rate monitoring - Automatic rollback triggers at 2% error rate increase - Instant feature flag toggles without redeployment

Results

After implementing automated rollbacks: - Mean time to recovery dramatically reduced - Engineering hours saved significantly each week - Customer impact substantially reduced - Team stress levels significantly decreased

Key Learnings

• Automation removes human decision-making delays
• Real-time monitoring is essential for fast detection
• Feature flags enable instant rollbacks without deployment