Time to retire the butler…

The profession of a butler feels today like a leftover of almost ancient aristocratic times. With the exception of a few reservations they almost got extinguished. And now we are facing the dusk on the most commonly known and democratic butler at all. In case you cannot follow – I’m talking about Jenkins …

From trusted servant to outdated legacy

Ever since Jenkins killed Watson, yes, it was the butler … many of us looked at him as a good old companion, making our lives easier by taking over all of the boring tasks once you’ve told him exactly what he should do. And don’t forget that it took a while before Jenkins turned into a woke system by rebranding the master/slave concept. But let’s be honest – how often have many of us felt like walking with a sharp pebble in the shoe?

Why Jenkins no longer fits the modern software era

In the past few years it became more and more obvious that Jenkins has its roots in a different age of software development. To be fair, Jenkins was a key enabler for CI and it helped tremendously to overcome bottlenecks in building software. No more editing of cryptic build files that felt even more than the stone age of software development. With more than 1,000 plug-ins (open source and commercial) it could embed into almost any other part of your toolchain.

When flexibility becomes fragility

Both aspects are no longer sufficient today. In the era of AI you need a system that eliminates capacity shortages for CI AND CD, scaling elastically in the background and providing support for improvements and fixes in pipelines and source code. And although the number of supported plug-ins is unmatched, it has turned into a problem. Have you ever experienced that an upgrade of one part of the toolchain has been impossible, as the Open Source project could not release a new version of the plug-in? The likelihood for dependencies in the 2nd or 3rd degree grew exponentially with a Jenkins system deploying 150 plug ins or more. Jenkins has turned more and more into the poster boy for “Never touch a running system”.

The hidden costs behind “free”

What about the most important (and often lethal) argument that it is open source and for that free of license cost? This is still valid, but Jenkins is far away from being free of cost. Whenever you try to scale out in a large environment horizontally you can either go for a) commercial plugins that do the job or b) pay a team of administrators that take care of the environment.

Time to say goodbye, with dignity

It is about time to tell Jenkins “Thanks buddy, we both had a good time but ultimately friends let friends retire!” We should keep Jenkins in good memory, as it helped in the period of agility to explore what enables a productivity boost. It has been a pioneer in blazing new trails. Now it is time to say Good-bye, hand him his horse and hat and watch him riding into the sundown.

Yours sincerely,

Rainer Heinold

P.S: in case you worry about the migration effort, there is no need for it. Your existing pipelines can be migrated fast and reliable, without friction. There are agents out there to help … 😉

The Butler Replacement Has Arrived: Harness

To support the story that the era of the butler is over, you can smoothly introduce Harness as the next-generation platform. Here is the campaign-aligned section you can add after the blog (you can also move it higher if you prefer):

Meet the Modern Alternative: The Harness “Butler Replacement” Campaign

If Jenkins represents the loyal but aging butler, Harness represents the intelligent, automated successor, one that doesn’t need tea breaks, manual plug-in babysitting, or midnight maintenance windows.

Harness’ ongoing campaign sums it up perfectly:
👉 “It’s time to fire your CI/CD butler.”
(Reference: Break Free From Jenkins – Modernize Pipelines in 1 Day)

Why Harness fits perfectly into this narrative:

• AI-powered CI/CD that automatically fixes and optimizes pipelines
• No plugin hell – built-in capabilities instead of fragile community extensions
• Elastic, intelligent scalability without manual tuning
• End-to-end software delivery: CI, CD, Feature Flags, Cloud Cost, Security, IDP
• Migration without pain – automated pipeline conversion
• Enterprise reliability with governance, auditing, security, and SLAs

Harness doesn’t just replace Jenkins, it removes the entire category of manual labor Jenkins required.
This makes it the ideal modern successor in a world where AI-driven development is the new standard.