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Key takeaway
ADP swapped a patchwork of homegrown feature flag systems and week-long lead times for a single, standardized rollout engine powered by Harness Feature Management & Experimentation (FME). That shift cut flag delivery from up to three weeks to as little as one day, delivered sub-three millisecond evaluations at enterprise scale, and generated a 105% return on investment in their initial proof of value. Today, ADP teams stand up flags faster, ship more safely, and measure real business impact from every rollout.
About ADP
ADP is a global leader in human capital management, payroll, and HR solutions, serving organizations of every size and industry around the world. Their platforms sit at the heart of how millions of workers get paid and how HR teams operate, which makes reliability, compliance, and performance absolutely non-negotiable.
The Challenge: DIY Feature Flag Confusion
“Over the years we've accumulated a lot of debt and people are very confused by what do I use for this specific reason… it could be anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks to really have your flag up and running in production.” - Chris Davis, VP of Product Development
ADP traded a patchwork of homegrown flags and week-long lead times for a unified rollout engine powered by Harness FME. Many enterprises inherit a patchwork of homegrown tools and one-off workflows for feature flags. That fragmentation creates cognitive load for devs, slows approvals, and creates unnecessary rollout delays. The result is longer lead times for even simple changes, brittle release practices, and a higher risk of misconfiguration particularly in regulated or multi-team environments.
The Solution: Progressive Delivery and Faster Response
Harness FME gave ADP the control, confidence, and data it needed to transform how software was delivered and validated.
“Now we're able to do it in 1 to 3 days… We're seeing extremely high volume of traffic and extremely low response time from the harness SDK getting cached responses in under three milliseconds.” - Patrick Laughlin, Senior Software Engineer
Standardizing on a modern feature management platform compresses the change cycle from weeks to days by unifying flag creation, approvals, rollout controls, and governance. Low-latency SDKs and edge caching keep runtime overhead negligible at scale, so teams can ship more, with less risk, and without performance trade-offs even under heavy load.
The Results: Faster ROI, Happier Teams, Measurable Growth
The transformation has been dramatic—both culturally and financially.
“The benefit and the ROI that we have seen… has now been 105% according to the proof of value that we did with the Harness team.” - Chris Davis, VP of Product Development
Centralized feature management typically pays back through faster time-to-value, fewer late-night incidents, and higher experimentation velocity. Those gains compound across product lines and teams, translating into measurable financial ROI and real revenue impact alongside happier developers and stakeholders.
The Broader Impact: From Weeks To Days
Standardizing on Harness FME compressed the entire lifecycle for a new flag creation.
Before: 1 to 3 weeks to get a flag into production, depending on which system was involved and who needed to sign off.
After: 1 to 3 days from idea to production-ready flag, with consistent workflows and governance baked in.
Developers no longer need to reinvent flag plumbing or argue about which legacy approach to use. They follow a repeatable pattern, plug into Harness FME, and focus on logic and experience rather than rollout mechanics.
Sub-three millisecond evaluations at scale
For a global HCM provider, performance impact is always a concern when adding a runtime dependency. Harness’ SDKs and edge architecture addressed that head on:
- Flags are evaluated via cached configurations, keeping network calls and latency to an absolute minimum.
- Evaluations complete in under three milliseconds, even under heavy load, so teams can confidently add flags to critical paths without worrying about customer impact.
The result is a rollout engine that supports both high traffic and high safety, rather than forcing teams to choose one or the other.
If you’re looking to cut release times, de-risk rollouts, and quantify real ROI from experimentation, explore Harness Feature Management & Experimentation (FME). See how FME streamlines approvals, enables safe progressive delivery, and delivers sub-millisecond flag evaluations at scale so your teams can ship faster with confidence.
Ready to go deeper? Schedule a tailored walkthrough or start a proof of value to see FME in your environment.
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