Introduction
Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) provides vital financial services to farmers, ranchers, and agribusinesses across the Midwest. For Wendell Hutchinson, an SRE at FCSAmerica, supporting the application development teams means ensuring their platforms are observable and reliable. However, leadership lacked the objective data needed to make informed decisions about priorities, standards, and strategy.
To solve this, the SRE team turned to Cortex to replace subjective reporting with hard numbers, achieving significant results such as:
More objective data for better decision-making. Scorecards gave executives the hard numbers they needed to set priorities and track progress against engineering standards.
Increased adoption driven by friendly competition. A wave of gamification sparked by Scorecards accelerated improvements in service quality, leading to a 25% increase in successful automated testing runs in just three months.
A single source of truth instead of scattered, subjective updates. Instead of relying on anecdotal feedback, teams and leaders could now see the real-time health of their services.
The challenge: Making strategic decisions without objective data
Before implementing Cortex, FCSAmerica’s leadership had limited visibility into the state of their software ecosystem.
They relied on development teams to self-report progress, which made it difficult to get a clear, objective picture of service quality and adherence to standards. Wendell adds, "Before Cortex, our leadership relied on the development teams to let them know how things were going and didn't have measurements or objective data to back those things up." The challenge was compounded by the complexity of their environment.
With over 200 microservices, dozens of teams, and multiple cloud providers, gaining a unified view of service health and ownership was a constant struggle. The team initially considered building a solution in-house but quickly realized the effort required would be overwhelming. Instead, they began looking for a platform that was powerful, flexible, and easy to adopt.
The solution: An IDP that delivers both power and flexibility
After a proof-of-concept phase with Cortex and another vendor, Wendell says the choice was obvious. The key differentiators were Cortex’s ease of use, comprehensive documentation, and the flexibility of its APIs. “As soon as we got an instance up and we could look at the real docs and poke at the real APIs and learn how flexible everything was, it was easy,” he says.
"You can look at other products, but you're not going to find anything that's going to match the flexibility and the speed that you can get things up and running." — Wendell Hutchinson, SRE, Farm Credit Services of America
With the decision made, the team held briefings with leadership and lead developers to get their feedback and buy-in before rolling out its first application security Scorecard to all 13 of its development teams at once. This step was crucial for building alignment and ensuring the new standards would be adopted smoothly across the organization.
The results: Data-driven decisions and a culture of proactive improvement
Almost immediately, the new visibility from Scorecards created an unexpected cultural shift. “We did not plan for gamification to be a factor, and sure enough, it did not take long before we had developers, team leaders, and managers all talking about, ‘Well, we're on top and you're not,’” Wendell notes.
This friendly competition accelerated improvements in service quality and security, leading to tangible results. In just three months, the teams achieved a 25% increase in successful automated testing runs and made steady progress in mitigating high-vulnerability risks.
"There hasn't been anything that we haven't been able to do. We've been able to model things in different ways to see how it works." — Wendell Hutchinson, SRE, Farm Credit Services of America
Beyond the friendly competition, the objective data from Scorecards fundamentally changed how engineering leadership made decisions. Instead of relying on anecdotal updates, leaders could now see hard numbers on service quality and security posture, allowing them to have more strategic conversations about priorities and standards.
Wendell also tells us it didn't take long for Cortex to establish itself as a true partner, rather than just another software vendor. “Cortex as a product has been outstanding, but my favorite part has been working with the Cortex teams,” he adds. “From sales and pre-implementation to gut-checking a new idea, they’re always quick and they’re spot on.”
As FCSAmerica continues to evolve, Wendell sees Cortex as the foundation for maintaining quality at scale. “We have to produce and maintain the right level of quality for our customers,” he says. “The ride that we're on with Cortex is giving us that.”
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