January 2024 Summaries

Harness.io has significantly transformed its Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline by standardizing deployment processes, implementing version control, and introducing governance through Policy as Code, which has enhanced efficiency, security, and developer productivity. The migration from Harness First Gen to Harness Next Gen marked a critical step, requiring adaptation to new capabilities and the consolidation of 128 pipelines. The company tackled challenges such as complexity due to multiple pipelines, lack of standardization, pipeline management difficulties, and inconsistent validation, which arose as they scaled from a single product to a multi-product company. A redesign led to the creation of a simplified, unified pipeline, dubbed the Golden K8s Pipeline, which standardizes deployment across all services, leveraging tools like Kubernetes, Google Artifact Registry, and Slack for notification. The new pipeline system employs version-controlled templates and automated triggers, enhancing consistency and reducing manual input from developers. Additionally, the implementation of granular RBAC ensures developers have access to the resources they need. Harness.io’s ongoing evolution includes a transition to Helm Charts for better modularity and scalability, and plans to further simplify developer inputs, showcasing their commitment to continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Harness provides a comprehensive software delivery platform that prioritizes robust security and compliance features, designed to meet the strict standards required by both the company and its customers. The platform includes elements such as strong authentication, role-based access control, audit trails, approval stages, and policy-as-code governance, all of which are critical in ensuring a secure environment. Harness employs these features internally as part of its "dogfooding" approach, allowing the company to meet its own compliance requirements, like SOC and ISO standards, while also enhancing its engineering capabilities. By integrating tools like the Open Policy Agent for policy-as-code, Harness ensures that its security measures are automated and scalable, reducing the risk of manual errors and strengthening the overall security posture of development teams.

Feature flags in Next.js applications offer an innovative approach to web development by allowing developers to control feature rollouts without deploying new code, thus enhancing flexibility and reducing risks. This method enables developers to merge code into the main branch and deploy it while keeping features hidden until they're ready, speeding up development and providing the ability to quickly disable features if issues arise. Feature flags facilitate advanced practices such as A/B testing, canary releases, and user-segmented rollouts, allowing developers to test features on specific user groups before a full release. The guide explores the setup for implementing feature flags in a React environment using the Split by Harness tool, which includes creating feature flags, setting up environments, and testing the integration. Advanced techniques such as gradual rollouts and user segmentation offer refined control over feature management, while testing and quality assurance ensure feature flag implementations do not introduce bugs. Overall, feature flags empower developers to conduct safer rollouts, improve user experiences, and maintain a dynamic and user-centric application development process.

Harness Software Supply Chain Assurance (SSCA) enhances software supply chain security by providing real-time remediation tracking, SBOM scoring, and drift detection, which collectively enable organizations to swiftly address vulnerabilities and ensure compliance with security standards. The SSCA module offers tools such as real-time zero-day remediation tracking, artifact enumeration, environment visibility, deployment pipeline tracing, and an artifact exclusion mechanism, all aiming to simplify and streamline vulnerability management. Additionally, the SSCA introduces SBOM scoring to evaluate the quality of Software Bills of Materials based on criteria like compliance with NTIA guidelines and data quality, helping assess risks and improving SBOM tools. SBOM drift detection is another feature that tracks changes in software artifacts to prevent security and compliance risks, providing detailed analysis and manual review options. The integration with project management tools like Jira facilitates efficient communication and task management, while the SSCA's platform approach supports robust DevSecOps practices with its comprehensive features.

Harness has introduced new features for Chaos Engineering at ChaosCarnival 2024, aimed at enhancing system resilience and simplifying chaos experimentation for DevOps teams. Key innovations include automated onboarding for Kubernetes clusters, which streamlines the process by automatically discovering services and creating chaos experiments, eliminating the need for manual deployment of chaos agents. The ChaosGuard feature provides governance over chaos orchestration by allowing administrators to set rules and conditions for executing experiments, ensuring controlled execution to prevent service disruptions. Users can also benefit from resilience probe dashboards that analyze the impact of chaos faults on specific service states, and a free sandbox environment that offers hands-on learning opportunities. Additionally, Harness has launched a Chaos ROI calculator to help organizations justify investments in chaos engineering by estimating costs and potential benefits, and offers a certification process for those seeking formal recognition of their expertise.

Harness GitOps-as-a-Service offers a comprehensive solution to streamline software deployment through automation, centralized monitoring, and effective rollback features, enhancing both developer experience and operational efficiency. Announced in September 2022, it aims to simplify the management of GitOps control planes and accelerate the delivery of GitOps-powered platforms. With self-service onboarding now available, users can engage with the platform through workshops, free plans, or demos to understand its capabilities. Harness GitOps utilizes agents, ArgoCD, Flux, and Git to automate and synchronize deployment processes, offering robust features like comprehensive pipeline automation, centralized dashboards, and orchestration across environments. It supports Infrastructure-as-Code and feature flag management, providing flexibility with ArgoCD and Flux reconcilers, and is designed to cater to both developers and managers by ensuring ease of use, visibility, and compliance with organizational standards. Eric Minick is part of the product management team at Harness, contributing his expertise in software delivery to advance the platform's offerings.

Harness' Chaos Engineering ROI Calculator is a tool designed to help organizations estimate potential business losses from system outages and assess the financial benefits of implementing chaos engineering practices. By simulating failures and enhancing recovery processes, the calculator aims to improve system reliability and reduce downtime. It requires data on past incidents, developer and SRE costs, and services subject to chaos testing to estimate associated human costs and potential losses. The tool calculates the return on investment by comparing reliability-related losses before and after chaos engineering practices are adopted, emphasizing the reduction in recovery times, developer workload, and overall outages. Users can quickly access a three-year summary and receive guidance from reliability experts for further insights into chaos engineering implementation.

Harness is highlighted as a pivotal tool in integrating ArgoCD and Terraform to enhance the GitOps experience, facilitating seamless orchestration between application and infrastructure tools while addressing common challenges such as governance, visibility, and reporting. GitOps, a strategy utilizing Git for defining environment states, is known for its efficiency and developer-friendly nature, though it poses challenges with domain-specific reconcilers like ArgoCD and Terraform, as well as governance burdens on developers. Harness improves this by orchestrating between these tools, providing an enhanced user experience through quality telemetry, simplified governance checks, and a unified reporting interface. This streamlined approach not only addresses the complexities of bootstrapping environments but also maintains high standards of efficiency and security, positioning Harness as a significant asset in the DevOps domain. Eric Minick, who has extensive experience in software delivery and DevOps practices, plays a key role in bringing Harness's innovative solutions to market.

Serverless computing, as explored by Dewan Ahmed, offers a transformative approach to software development by abstracting the complexities of server management, thereby enhancing cost efficiency, scalability, and flexibility. This computing model allows developers to focus on coding rather than infrastructure concerns, and it adapts seamlessly to fluctuating workloads, making it ideal for applications such as auto-scaling websites, event streaming, and IoT. However, the serverless paradigm presents challenges, including unpredictable costs, portability issues, and the risk of shifting complexities. Despite these challenges, integrating serverless deployment into a CI/CD pipeline can enhance productivity, increase early defect detection, and streamline release cycles, promoting a disciplined and efficient software delivery process. Ahmed emphasizes the importance of maintaining disciplined practices even in serverless environments, advocating for a robust CI/CD pipeline to ensure consistency and reliability across application landscapes. Through his role at Harness and his extensive experience in the tech industry, Ahmed aims to enable teams to deliver code efficiently and reliably, while also championing diversity and offering career coaching to underrepresented groups in technology.

Harness Software Engineering Insights (SEI) enhances code quality and developer productivity through its Quality Module, which utilizes the Trellis Framework for comprehensive analysis of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The framework evaluates various metrics, including both lagging indicators, such as defect escape rate and change failure rate, and leading indicators, like SonarQube issues and automation test coverage, to provide insights for improving software quality. SEI's system integrates with over 40 third-party tools, enabling structured engineering improvements and resource optimization, while its centralized dashboards offer visibility into key performance indicators. By aligning resources with business objectives, SEI aids in efficient project delivery and goal-setting, ultimately guiding development teams toward engineering excellence.

Usability testing is a critical component of software development, providing essential insights into user experience (UX) by observing how users interact with digital products to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Various methods are available, including moderated testing, which involves direct interaction with participants, and unmoderated testing, which allows users to complete tasks independently, offering scalability and cost-effectiveness. Think-aloud testing asks participants to verbalize their thoughts, while remote testing enables users to engage from their own locations, albeit with potential technical limitations. A/B testing compares different versions of a product to determine optimal usability, and benchmark testing assesses product performance against industry standards. Accessibility testing ensures products are inclusive for users with disabilities. Feature flags and experimentation platforms can enhance usability testing by allowing controlled feature rollouts and real-time user feedback, enabling iterative improvements. Split's feature management platform exemplifies this approach, offering tools to safely deploy features, conduct A/B tests, and connect feature usage to contextual data for informed decision-making in software development.

Maintaining hygiene in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is essential for enhancing software quality, security, and fostering a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement. Hygiene in this context refers to standardized practices, procedures, and protocols that maintain the integrity, reliability, and effectiveness of the development process. It involves starting with clear documentation of requirements and maintaining code quality throughout all phases, from design to implementation. The emphasis on hygiene not only results in robust and secure software solutions that meet stakeholder expectations but also enables accurate tracking, enhanced insights, proactive problem resolution, and data-driven decision-making. Cultivating a feedback-rich environment and fostering cross-functional collaboration are crucial for continuous improvement, while defining clear metrics and promoting accountability help measure and enhance hygiene standards. By prioritizing these aspects, organizations can navigate the complexities of software development confidently and effectively.

The introduction of the drone-helm-chart-container-registry plugin in Harness CI addresses the need for a streamlined process to publish OCI Helm charts to container registries like Google Artifact Registry, eliminating the requirement for manual scripting and thus enhancing CI/CD pipeline efficiency. This plugin, supported natively by Harness CI, allows users to package and push Helm charts effortlessly to services such as Docker Hub and Google Artifact Registry, providing a standardized and efficient solution that integrates seamlessly with existing CI pipelines. By offering a range of customization options, the plugin accommodates various use cases, making it a valuable tool for both seasoned DevOps professionals and newcomers to CI/CD. For further details and community support, users are encouraged to explore the plugin's GitHub repository or schedule a demo to see its benefits in action.

Harness has introduced a revamped user interface, Nav 2.0, designed to enhance user experience by addressing the diverse needs of its growing platform. The update includes features such as a scope selector for focused navigation, a unified view for immediate access to shared resources, and a breadcrumb trail for tracking workflow. The aim is to provide a more intuitive navigation experience, reduce distractions, and save time for specialists, DevOps engineers, and leaders alike. The new settings page facilitates easier configuration across different scopes, and users are encouraged to explore and provide feedback on these changes as part of Harness's commitment to continuous improvement.

In January 2024, Harness announced comprehensive updates across its product suite to enhance various functionalities, including Continuous Delivery & GitOps, Continuous Integration, Chaos Engineering, Security Testing Orchestration, the Internal Developer Portal, Software Engineering Insights, Continuous Error Tracking, and Infrastructure-as-Code Management. Notable improvements include bidirectional sync and freeze window notifications for GitOps, Ruby support in Test Intelligence, UI updates for Chaos Engineering, and additional settings for Security Testing Orchestration with Checkmarx. The updates also feature enhanced support for HTTP actions in the Internal Developer Portal, detailed reports within Software Engineering Insights, and extended Mac support for Continuous Error Tracking. Infrastructure-as-Code Management now includes cost estimation and PR automation features, providing users with detailed insights into cloud spending and resource changes. These updates aim to streamline software delivery processes and enhance user experience across the Harness platform.

Harness has acquired Armory, including its key intellectual property and technology, to enhance its modern software delivery platform that supports application development, deployment, and operations. This acquisition will allow Harness to continue supporting Armory's customers, with key engineering and customer support roles joining Harness to ensure a seamless transition. The move aims to accelerate innovation and improve the developer and DevOps teams' experience by integrating Armory's continuous deployment technologies into Harness's offerings. Notably, Harness has a history of successful technology acquisitions and contributions to open-source projects like Drone and Chaos Native. The transition will involve migrating Armory customers to the Harness platform, promising improved support and integration flexibility, while maintaining full support for Armory's Continuous Delivery Self-Hosted product. The acquisition is seen as a commitment to enhancing the developer community's experience, with Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal expressing excitement about the potential for growth and collaboration.

Chaos Carnival 2024, hosted by Harness, is a free virtual conference scheduled for January 24-25, aimed at educating participants on building resilient systems through chaos engineering. The event will feature keynote speakers like Jyoti Bansal and Nicolas Chaillan, who will address topics such as shift-left reliability and the urgency of adopting chaos engineering practices. Attendees can participate in hands-on workshops with a Kubernetes sandbox environment, earn a new certification, and gain invaluable insights into creating more resilient systems. The event promises over 30 sessions covering a range of topics like observability, SRE best practices, and cloud-native chaos engineering, offering numerous networking opportunities with global experts in the field. Matt Schillerstrom, a Product Marketing Manager at Harness with extensive experience in DevOps and reliability practices, emphasizes the importance of modern delivery workflows that prioritize governance, automation, and resilience.

The Harness CLI, an open-source tool licensed under MIT, provides a command-line interface for managing CI/CD workflows, serving as an alternative to the Web UI. The text discusses the release of this tool, its purpose, and encourages contributions from the community to enhance its development and engagement. It highlights the author's personal experience with contributing to the project, emphasizing the importance of starting small, understanding the project's ecosystem, and aligning contributions with existing code conventions. The text also touches on the role of AI coding assistants in facilitating contributions, while cautioning against the submission of untested code. Overall, contributing to open source, as exemplified by the Harness CLI, offers a valuable opportunity for skill development and community interaction.