Jackpocket streamlines regulatory compliance and accelerates mobile app development
Before
High rate of incidents during deployments
3 deploys per month
30-minute mean time to recovery
After
Deploy incidents reduced by 90%
Daily deployments
< 10-minute mean time to recovery
90+% of new services are deployed on-demand
About Jackpocket
Jackpocket, a mobile app revolutionizing the lottery gaming experience, is committed to innovation and user-centric design. With a mission to modernize and democratize lottery participation, Jackpocket has seamlessly integrated cutting-edge technology, including the powerful feature management platform, LaunchDarkly, to enhance its user experience and platform functionality.
Challenge
As a company operating in a complex regulatory environment, Jackpocket faces challenges ensuring compliance with state-specific regulations while maintaining a fast-paced software development cycle. With users spread across various states, each governed by their own set of regulations, delivering personalized feature experiences was cumbersome. Managing feature releases and targeting specific regions with precision proved to be a daunting task as teams had to create unique code for each variation and state. Even when a feature would make it into production the Jackpocket team would often have to roll back if they needed to place a fix. This rollback and fix could take anywhere from hours to days to deploy, ultimately hindering their user experience. Additionally, several teams were using various languages and tech stacks, which only added to the complexity.
Before LaunchDarkly, we had several bottlenecks in the way we delivered software across our user base. Teams couldn’t target a feature and roll it out to only that set of users. In our space, we only have certain features that are allowed in certain states, so it's more than just releasing to the right customers—it's a matter of compliance.
Todd Resudek
Principal Engineer, Jackpocket
Solution
Principal Engineer, Todd Resudek, looked to fix their challenges by partnering with LaunchDarkly and fully embracing a true agile software delivery lifecycle. As Jackpocket’s teams adopted LaunchDarkly, they began to ship smaller code changes to specific user groups without having to interrupt others within their workflows and teams had a wide variety of SDKs to choose from for their specific use case and application. With the Jira integration, teams gained a stable workflow and a complete view of where a flag or feature was at any point during a release.
The LaunchDarkly advanced targeting capabilities also allow Jackpocket to release features selectively based on users' geographic locations. Now, the teams can quickly release features that are compliant within certain regions and not hold back the entire software delivery lifecycle. With features like segments and multi-variations, the mobile app product teams can quickly test UI changes without requiring code changes.
LaunchDarkly gives our teams the ability to use their targeting to carefully test features in specific environments. QA, Devs, and Product Managers all have their own environments to test features without impacting one another.
Todd Resudek
Principal Engineer, Jackpocket
Todd added: "We needed a solution that benefited our tech stack and multiple languages as well as a solution that not only had robust targeting but could help teams test their code safely across environments."
Facilitating trunk-based development
LaunchDarkly revolutionizes Jackpocket's development process by facilitating trunk-based development. With feature flags integrated into the codebase, developers can work on features independently, ensuring continuous integration without the need for long-running branches that can cause merge conflicts. This approach fosters collaboration and accelerates the delivery of new features to users.
Empowering teams to work independently
LaunchDarkly empowers product, QA, and development teams to work autonomously, leveraging feature flags to control feature releases and conduct targeted testing. With LaunchDarkly, teams can iterate rapidly, validate hypotheses, and gather feedback without dependencies or bottlenecks, driving innovation and efficiency across the organization.
LaunchDarkly has helped us reduce the back and forth between product and engineering. The Jira integration makes it easy for all teams to know the status of a flag at any point of a feature release.
Nikil Ramanathan
Group Product Manager, Jackpocket
Streamlining software development cycles
LaunchDarkly accelerates time-to-market for new features while maintaining the integrity and stability of the product. With precise feature targeting and controlled rollouts, Jackpocket can release features to their users with confidence in their quality and performance.
LaunchDarkly helps us deploy to smaller user groups that can help us address issues before they become problematic for the business.
Matt Silber
Staff Engineer, Jackpocket
Results
The integration of LaunchDarkly into Jackpocket's development workflow has yielded transformative results:
- Accelerated development cycles: LaunchDarkly's feature flagging capabilities enable Jackpocket to iterate swiftly and release features to users faster, driving continuous innovation and keeping pace with market demands.
- Enhanced collaboration: Trunk-based development practices facilitated by LaunchDarkly promote seamless collaboration between product, QA, and development teams, enabling them to work independently without blocking one another.
- Improved time-to-market: LaunchDarkly accelerates time-to-market for new features, empowering Jackpocket to stay ahead of the competition and deliver exceptional value to users.
- Reduction in outages and improved recovery times: With the implementation of LaunchDarkly, Jackpocket can now roll back from an outage within milliseconds compared to the previous 30-minute time to restore.
At times, we would put so much time and effort into a release only to have it roll back and [negatively] impact our customer experience. The fact that at a click of a button avoiding an outage can save us revenue and lower our mean time to recovery by 66% is game-changing for us.
Todd Resudek
Principal Engineer, Jackpocket
Conclusion
LaunchDarkly has been instrumental in Jackpocket's journey to revolutionize the lottery experience. By empowering innovation, accelerating development, and enhancing user experiences, LaunchDarkly has helped position Jackpocket as a clear innovator in the mobile app lottery gaming industry. As Jackpocket continues to push the boundaries of what's possible, LaunchDarkly remains a trusted partner in driving success and delivering exceptional value to users.