?? Failure, Learning, and Success: The Jenkins Upgrade Journey ??

When we first attempted a critical Jenkins upgrade, the goal was clear: enhance security, compatibility, and efficiency without interrupting our CI/CD pipelines. But things didn’t go as planned. Challenges emerged—unexpected plugin conflicts, agent startup issues, and Java version mismatches that threw our timelines off track. The initial result? A rollback and a valuable lesson learned.

Here’s how we turned it around:

1. Reflecting on Failures: Instead of just moving on, we analysed every issue and its root cause. The team worked together to identify compatibility gaps, particularly with plugins and developed more robust test environments to catch problems earlier.

2. Iterative Improvements: With new insights, we prepped a revised strategy, focusing on controlled testing, optimizing agent capacity, and creating a dedicated “Green” environment to simulate the upgrade before production.

3. Achieving Success: We saw our improvements pay off on the next attempt. We monitored the upgrade in real-time from a virtual war room, adapted to a build surge without downtime, and tackled script approval adjustments swiftly. By noon, we had Jenkins up and running smoothly on the latest version, with all pipelines intact and no interruptions to production.

The takeaway? Failures often pave the way to success. With teamwork, strategic adjustments, and a commitment to improvement, we achieved what we wanted—better, smarter, and stronger.

#DevOps #ContinuousImprovement #JenkinsUpgrade #LearningJourney