About experimental components

Overview

Experimental components are kept behind a feature flag. The experimental components are intended for testing only, not production. Experimental components follow an accelerated process, by passing these standard steps:

• Functional specs
• Prod QA & Accessibility testing

The experimental components follow the core release schedule, and are available to all adopters who can afford the potential risks. Experimental components are not subject to the same level of stability as production components. This means breaking changes such as name change, functional change, design change, or deprecation, may happen at each minor & major release.

Life cycle

Experimental component should be short lived. Nothing is intended to be behind the feature flag forever. Below is the process for keeping the experimental components moving / evolving:

1. Enter experimental (based on reuse)
2. Once a year, set reminder to look at it again (Last evaluation: May 25, 2021)
3. Triage based on criteria --> if good, promote to core; if not good, deprecate

Reasons to enter experimental

This is decided based on the amount of reuse we anticipate. A proposed component may be put behind a feature flag if:

• Design is not fully flushed out, and subject to change
• Component requires testing to evaluate effectiveness
• Bespoke to only a few experiences, not common in IBM.com