Harness Announces Engineering Leadership Community to Codify Engineering Excellence Standards

Pioneering initiative brings together 300 senior engineering leaders to codify best practices and elevate engineering excellence

San Francisco, Sept 21, 2023 - Harness, the Modern Software Delivery Platform® company, is proud to announce the establishment of the industry-wide Engineering Excellence Collective^TM, a groundbreaking engineering leadership community. The Collective comprises 300 esteemed senior engineering leaders, CTOs, and MDs from leading global organizations, including Broadcom, CrowdStrike, Encora, NetApp, Palo Alto Networks, Pipe, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Xactly, OutSystems, Pure Storage Inc. and many more. The Collective represents an unprecedented collaborative effort to drive innovation and advance industry-wide initiatives, the first of which is a comprehensive Engineering Excellence Maturity Model. To learn more about the Collective and information about joining please visit engineeringx.org.  

“I am thrilled to participate in this amazing initiative to define and codify best practices. This is a big gap for engineering leaders. This model serves as a guidepost for understanding how to move the needle and challenge ourselves to get better. It really scratches my itch to understand how other leaders are solving similar challenges and how we can learn from the collective wisdom of engineering leaders,” said Karan Gupta, VP of Engineering at Palo Alto Networks.

‍“It was a pleasure collaborating with some of the top minds in the field to put together this much needed compendium of best practices,” said Preeti Iyer, Distinguished Engineer, SVP Enterprise Architecture at Wells Fargo.

The Engineering Excellence Collective’s aim is to foster an environment of knowledge exchange and best practice sharing among top engineering minds to stimulate industry progress. At the heart of this initiative is the group’s first major initiative, the Engineering Excellence Maturity Model, a cutting-edge framework that outlines 11 crucial pillars essential for achieving engineering excellence in software development. These include:

• Planning and Requirements Process
• Discoverability and Documentation
• Developer Environment Experience
• Development Process
• Build Process
• Quality and Resilience Testing
• Deployment Process
• Integrated Security and Governance
• Metrics and Insights
• Incident Management
• Learning and Development

This comprehensive model provides a prescriptive guide to elevate engineering practices and drive excellence and developer experience within organizations. Each pillar encompasses a set of capabilities necessary to reach the full potential of engineering achievement. Unlike existing frameworks, the Engineering Excellence Collective doesn't replace established models like DORA or SPACE. Instead, it supplements them by offering specific guidance on capabilities and processes needed to enhance DORA metrics.

‍Harness has used the groundbreaking Engineering Excellence Maturity Model to create an innovative survey assessment tool. The Harness Engineering Excellence Survey Assessment, publicly launched today, empowers engineering teams to gauge their excellence across each facet and obtain an overall Engineering Excellence Maturity Score. Teams can also compare their scores against industry benchmarks, receive tailored recommendations, and prioritize improvement areas. For more information on the Survey Assessment please visit https://assessment.harness.io/assessment/invite

"Engineering leadership can be a lonely job. We are changing that by creating a community for engineering leaders to learn from each other and codify best practices. The initial initiatives we've worked on – the assessment and the maturity model – give engineering leaders a unique perspective on the strengths and weaknesses in their engineering practices, and put together a holistic plan of improvement prioritized by areas that will be the most impactful,” said Nishant Doshi, GM of Software Engineering Insights at Harness. “ This initiative is a collaborative effort to bridge gaps in codifying engineering best practices and provide peer-based learning opportunities that foster progress, growth, and innovation.”

Harness is committed to promoting industry-wide innovation and excellence. The initiative demonstrates Harness's dedication to providing the tools and resources necessary for engineering leaders to navigate the complex landscape of engineering excellence.

For more information about the Engineering Excellence Collective and the Engineering Excellence Maturity Model, visit www.engineeringx.org.  We welcome new members who are passionate about driving engineering excellence in their organizations.

About Harness

Harness is the leading end-to-end platform for complete software delivery. It provides a simple, safe, and secure way for engineering and DevOps teams to release applications into production. Harness uses machine learning to detect the quality of deployments and automatically roll back failed ones, saving time and reducing the need for custom scripting and manual oversight, giving engineers their nights and weekends back. Harness is based in San Francisco. Please visit www.harness.io to learn more