Ancestry Cuts Downtime by 50% Using Harness Governance

Ancestry, a leading company in family history and consumer genomics, significantly improved its software deployment process by adopting Harness, achieving an 85% reduction in effort compared to its previous use of Jenkins. This transition enabled Ancestry to onboard 350 systems in a year, increase deployment velocity by threefold, and reduce production outages by 50%, with a 97% adoption rate of centralized testing tools. Initially, Ancestry's deployment process was inconsistent and unreliable, with different teams using custom Jenkins pipelines that led to downtime and operational challenges. Chief Architect Russ Barnett spearheaded the standardization efforts, focusing on implementing canary deployments and centralized testing to address these issues. Despite initial skepticism, the switch to Harness has been well-received due to its user-friendly interface and improved governance, leading to greater stability and productivity across Ancestry's platform.