SRE Best Practices Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jul 3, 2026 4 min read

The Feature Flag Cleanup Discipline

Feature flags accumulate. The discipline that prevents flag-debt: every flag has an owner and a death date.

When you create a flag

Owner assigned at creation. The owner is responsible for retirement.

TTL set at creation. Default 90 days; extensions require justification.

The flag's purpose is documented. 'What happens when this flag is removed?' answered in writing.

Track the flag's traffic. If the flag is fully ramped (100% on, 0% off) for 30 days, it is a candidate for retirement.

Quarterly audit: surface stale flags to their owners. Owner either justifies or removes.

Flags with no traffic for 30 days: usually safe to remove without owner negotiation.

Code change: remove the flag check, hardcode the chosen path.

Flag platform change: delete the flag from the platform. Both must happen.

Test: the regression suite should pass without the flag. If it does not, retirement was premature.