CI/CD Goals

WorkJam’s overarching goal with CI/CD was to streamline and automate the entire software delivery process, focusing on efficiency, developer experience, and operational agility. WorkJam aimed to ensure that both Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) processes were reliable, scalable, and easy to manage, ultimately enabling faster and more secure software releases to their enterprise customers.

• Developer Reliability: Provide developers with a CI tool they could trust—one that was stable, non-intrusive, and “just works.” The aim was to minimize disruptions and allow developers to focus on building features rather than troubleshooting pipeline issues
• Operational Cost Reduction: By simplifying pipeline management and automating repetitive tasks, WorkJam sought to lower operational expenses and free up engineering resources for higher-value work
• Security Integration: Shift security left by integrating vulnerability scanning into the CI process, ensuring that builds with vulnerabilities are blocked before they reach production

“The thing about Harness that stands out to me is the flexibility on both the technical and the people side of things. Using templates, we can build pipelines that match WorkJam’s use cases, and the Harness-WorkJam relationship has been transparent and mutually beneficial.”- Venelin Koulaxazov, Software Development Manager at WorkJam

CI/CD Challenges Before Harness

Before adopting Harness CI, WorkJam used Bitbucket Pipelines for CI and Harness for CD. The main challenges WorkJam encountered with Bitbucket Pipelines included:

• Limited CI Capabilities: Bitbucket Pipelines was seen as an add-on rather than a robust, standalone CI tool. WorkJam quickly hit the upper limits of what Bitbucket Pipelines could do for their growing needs.
• Lack of Templating: Bitbucket Pipelines did not support templating, making it difficult to standardize and quickly roll out changes or upgrades across multiple microservices.
• Build Performance: Average build times were around 30 minutes, and Docker image generation was slow due to a lack of advanced caching mechanisms. Builds were also unreliable as they had to be frequently rerun, and the lack of debugability added to the complexity.
• Operational Overhead: Maintenance and migration of pipelines were time-consuming, and adopting new technologies (e.g., upgrading Java versions) was inefficient.

Due to these challenges, WorkJam could not achieve its CI/CD goals.

Benefits of Harness CI and CD

After migrating to Harness CI and continuing with Harness CD, WorkJam observed significant improvements:

• Reduced Build Times: Docker image generation times dropped by around 40%. For example, what previously took 24-30 minutes now takes 15-17 minutes.
• Build Infrastructure: By letting Harness manage the build infrastructure (Harness Cloud), WorkJam could continue focusing on its core business instead of cluster maintenance.
• Templating and Reusability: Harness’s templating system enabled rapid pipeline creation, easier upgrades (such as Java version migrations), and consistent best practices across teams.
• Developer Experience: Developers reported a seamless experience—“it’s just there and it works”—with fewer interruptions and less time spent waiting for builds.
• Operational Efficiency: Pipeline creation and maintenance became much easier, reducing operational expenses and allowing for faster adoption of new technologies.
• Deployment Speed: Production deployments that used to take three days now take two to three hours—a more than 90% improvement in efficiency.
• Parallel Deployments: The ability to deploy multiple services to multiple environments simultaneously, with integrated approval workflows (e.g., via Jira and Slack), greatly improved release agility and governance.
• Security and Compliance: Security scanning is integrated into the CI process, ensuring that builds with vulnerabilities are blocked before reaching production.

“We achieved 40% faster builds and 90% faster deployments using Harness CI/CD.” - Venelin Koulaxazov, Software Development Manager at WorkJam

WorkJam’s adoption of Harness CI and CD has transformed their software delivery, enabling faster, more reliable, and more secure releases while significantly reducing operational burdens.