Interesting article. I will have to look into it more.
We took a slightly different approach. We are using the Configuration Block. Since another group owns the credentials for the connection strings to production databases, we just agreed on the keys to use to get into the block. The operations group controls where the data is actually stored and the underlying values.
But I will have to look at this. It looks like something I will have to keep in my backpocket for later use.