How Engineering Standards Help You Build More Perfect Software Faster
Blog post from New Relic
New Relic has formalized its engineering standards to enhance software development efficiency and ensure consistent practices across its expanding global operations. Distinguished Engineer Ron Crocker explains that these standards are designed to codify institutional knowledge, streamline decision-making, and leverage existing investments in technology, thereby accelerating development and improving reliability. The standards are organized into recommendation rings, ranging from mandatory to discouraged practices, and are publicly maintained in a GitHub repository, allowing for transparency and community input. Since being introduced in 2020, the standards have facilitated better communication, decision-making, and resource utilization across teams. New Relic aims to continually update these standards and is developing a scorecard to measure compliance and its impact on operational efficiency and incident reduction, with potential plans to open-source the standards in the future.