AI
Seven Source Control Tools, Ten CI/CD Platforms, One Fragmented Engineering Org
CVS Health’s 10,000 engineers ran on at least seven source control systems and more than ten CI/CD tools. Pushing one security policy, say, blocking an artifact with a critical vulnerability, meant changes across every platform. Infrastructure teams kept support knowledge wide and shallow instead of deep on any one tool.
“Our developers are largely speaking different languages.” — Mitch Enderle
Onboarding slowed. Moving to a new team inside CVS meant learning a new toolset on top of a new team and culture. Enderle called that a direct limit on career growth.
Consolidating onto GitHub EMU
CVS Health chose GitHub EMU as the single platform for all 10,000 developers. New engineers get access on day one without submitting requests or waiting for approvals.
Slack community channels let developers answer each other’s questions, which frees the platform team to work on improving the experience rather than fielding support tickets. Security gates enforced once across the unified platform apply consistently to every pipeline. Standardized tooling also removes the burden of learning a new toolset when moving between internal teams, which Enderle flagged as a real limit on career mobility inside large organizations.
Planning and Executing a 150,000-Repo Migration
Before the migration started, CVS Health had no count of how many repos it had. Irene Modeste’s team pulled data from all seven source control tools, consolidated over 100,000 repo records, and organized the work into five phases.
Three early problems forced course corrections. Voluntary migration dates slipped constantly, so mandatory dates replaced them. The shared spreadsheet corrupted under many contributors, so the team built a dedicated migration app. Daily runs originally took seven hours with four engineers. After automating error handling and validations, the scripts move over 600 repos in four hours with two engineers.
Migration Progress and the Pipeline Problem Ahead
By the end of Q3 2025, the migration was 50% complete. Q4 is projected to close at 85%, and deprecating six of the seven legacy source control tools is scheduled for Q1 2026 at 95% completion. Full migration, including the 2,000 GitLab repos that require CI/CD conversion to GitHub Actions, is targeted for Q1 2027.
The remaining hard problem is pipelines. Thousands of existing pipelines carry bespoke patterns and custom scripts.
“Some of these repos have 800 branches.” — Mitch Enderle
The team is running early Copilot agent POC work to automate that conversion rather than putting the burden on individual developer teams.
Notable Quotes
Our developers are largely speaking different languages. Mitch Enderle · ▶ 8:51
They don’t need permission. They don’t need access requests. Mitch Enderle · ▶ 7:14
Some of these repos have 800 branches. Mitch Enderle · ▶ 20:46
Key Takeaways
- Seven source control tools and ten CI/CD platforms made every security policy change a company-wide project at CVS Health.
- Migration scripts now move 600 repos in four hours with two engineers, down from seven-hour daily runs with four.
- By Q1 2026, six legacy source control tools will be deprecated, leaving only the 2,000 GitLab repos with CI/CD conversion work.