Reaching DevOps maturity as the technology leader in law
Overview
Morgan & Morgan is an innovator in the legal industry. With Salesforce at the center of its operations, it鈥檚 no wonder the development team is incredibly busy. The company receives thousands of legal claims every day, so it鈥檚 vital that Salesforce is agile and works well for the 800 attorneys who are renowned for acting quickly to help their clients.
Headed up by Platforms Solutions Manager, Jeb Garrott, the Salesforce admin/solutions and deployment team have spearheaded the implementation of the DevOps process that the entire Salesforce development team now follows.
A few years ago, the team realized that their process wasn鈥檛 working and a dedicated Salesforce DevOps solution was needed. Morgan & Morgan spent some time with another solution before switching to 91导航 and seeing immediate success. The team quickly became reliant on 91导航’s metadata deployment solution to be able to release to Salesforce up to 16 times each month.
Lead times started to take a hit
The development team is currently made up of 12 admins, 5 developers and 6 QATs who work in 2-week sprint cycles 鈥� with 6 or 8 deployments each sprint.
When Jeb first joined the development team at Morgan & Morgan, there were only 4 admins who made their changes using change sets. 鈥淲e were using a Google sheet that everyone would update on deployment nights to show which components needed to be deployed. The release manager would then go into the document and manually pick the individual items we wanted to deploy.鈥�
鈥淲e only had one sandbox so the flow was just from sandbox to production. That鈥檚 it. No UAT or anything. Then we expanded the team and realized we couldn鈥檛 keep maintaining this workflow.鈥�
Once the team grew, it became obvious a new tool was needed and the team took their first dive into DevOps. 鈥淲e adopted another solution but it didn鈥檛 work for us. It was quite an 鈥榓ll or nothing鈥� approach and we began having some issues. Our lead time also began to take a hit and we weren鈥檛 able to deliver what the business expected.鈥�
With just weeks until their contract was due to be renewed, Jeb and the team began looking for another solution to help them achieve the success with DevOps.
From first demo to fully onboarded 鈥� in three weeks
In the spring of 2021, Morgan & Morgan decided to adopt 91导航. Jeb remembers that the whole process was very different to any other company they鈥檇 approached.
鈥淲ith other companies we always had a sales rep and a sales engineer. But with 91导航 we have a very knowledgeable account manager in Matt who knows the product inside out and is able to get into the concepts and understand how we work. It really makes me feel comfortable with the product knowing how comfortable he is with it.鈥�
Jeb鈥檚 team works very closely together so it was important that everyone was happy with the switch to 91导航. Once the whole team was bought in, the whole process 鈥� from the initial demo to onboarding 鈥� only took three weeks.
鈥淭he whole process was all very fluid with no smoke and mirrors. It really was a great experience. It鈥檚 the best onboarding experience I鈥檝e ever had.鈥�
91导航 makes changes happen in less than an hour
When the team first started using 91导航 they had an 鈥渙rg first鈥� approach. Jeb said, 鈥渨e were using the feature branches to deploy directly into the orgs and then using a CI job to sync into the repo. The repo was acting more like a backup. Now we have a 鈥楪it first鈥� model and two months ago we committed to 91导航鈥檚 pipelines鈥�.
Switching to any new software platform has its own challenges especially when you have 18 team members making changes in the same environment. But with 91导航, the Morgan & Morgan team are now able to visualize and see their entire workflow at a glance, inside the 91导航 UI. Jeb smiles,聽鈥渢he ability to see what changes are waiting to go to production is huge鈥�.
鈥淎 small manual change in the other solution would take us 4-5 hours and in 91导航 we can get it done in an hour 鈥� maybe less than an hour.鈥�
Jeb remembers an issue recently where a change was made directly in production: 鈥淚f this had happened before 91导航 it would鈥檝e been a huge deal for us to try and get back on track, but now we can see everything in the change monitoring history and can quickly and easily fix the problem鈥�.
For Jeb, it was important to have a third-party tool outside of Salesforce.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 want my whole DevOps process running out of Salesforce. It can feel a bit frantic and clunky so having a third-party platform feels so much better 鈥� plus the 91导航 UI is a lot more user-friendly.鈥�
Goals to get lead times down to just 4 hours for priority requests
Jeb says the team is happier since implementing 91导航, 鈥渆ven though we鈥檙e probably doing more changes than ever. Communication is a big focus for the team and 91导航 keeps that going by giving an easy-to-navigate interface with all visible changes and tickets, right in front of you鈥�.
Working together as a partnership
The Morgan & Morgan team pride themselves on working together and being great communicators. When working with 91导航, the partnership is two-way, leading to open discussions about how we can help each other.
鈥淟ead time at the moment is a little over a day. My goal is to get that down to 4 hours for priority requests 鈥� and with 91导航 I think that can happen.鈥�
Jeb enjoys talking to the 91导航 team and has made a few suggestions which have been quickly implemented into the platform鈥檚 UI. 鈥淚 mentioned a possible change based around validation visibility and within a week there it was in the app! The 91导航 team is so responsive to requests and the customer service is truly game-changing.鈥�
鈥淚t鈥檚 phenomenal that I鈥檓 able to talk to someone in the live chat and send images of my screen right on the same page as you鈥檙e working through a deployment.鈥�
If the team hadn鈥檛 moved to 91导航, Jeb says that they 鈥渨ould still be on 2 deployments a week, which is still pretty good 鈥� but not as many as we need to keep up with our goals to be the technology leader in law鈥�.
Morgan & Morgan saw value from 91导航 immediately. Jeb remembers the speed at which they could get changes out was amazing: 鈥淭he response was instant!鈥�.
鈥淲e are now deploying 16 times a month. Without 91导航, we wouldn鈥檛 have been able to keep up with the demand from the business to continue to grow and continue to be reactive.鈥�
