A team of developers manages a web service endpoint interfacing with a mobile application. They need to roll out a new feature which adjusts the data format returned to clients. To prevent potential disruptions to the live mobile application, what strategy should they employ for introducing this new feature to end-users?
Conduct thorough testing in an isolated clone of the production environment before updating the live service.
Initiate a staged rollout by gradually increasing the new feature exposure to a fraction of live traffic before full deployment.
Merge the changes directly into the production environment during low-traffic periods to evaluate real user interactions without notice.
Create a new, identically named environment and quickly switch all user traffic to this updated version to minimize downtime.