The Harden Method - MarinextAI

The HARDEN™ Method

A discipline path from messy reality to reliable automation. If it can’t survive the Break phase, it doesn’t ship.

Let's Implement HARDEN™ Into Your Business

What this step does

Define business outcomes & ROI levers
Map current process (systems, owners, handoffs)
Inventory data/APIs, auth, quotas, PII
Capture constraints (GDPR, security, SLAs)
Baseline metrics & select pilot

[step 1]

Discover

Benefits

Clear ROI target and scope
Aligned stakeholders, fewer surprises
Risks visible early; realistic timelines
Quick-win pilot identified

[deliverables]

Process map

Metrics baseline

Risk register

Prioritized backlog

What this step does

Future-state workflow (happy paths + edge cases)
Data model & identifiers; idempotency strategy
Roles & access (least privilege, audit)
Human-in-the-loop points
Failure modes, rollback & replay plan
Prompt spec & evaluation plan
Observability design (logs, metrics, traces)

[step 2]

Design

Benefits

Measurable acceptance criteria
Scalable, auditable architecture
Lower change risk; faster reviews

[deliverables]

Solution design

Data schema

Test plan

Monitoring spec

Rollback playbook

What this step does

Modular n8n flows (named, commented)
Secrets in env; retries/backoff configured
Idempotency & dedupe guards
Fixtures & seed data in sandbox
Structured logging (run_id, entity_id, step, latency)
Documentation & runbook

[step 3]

Build

Benefits

Faster, safer iteration
Reduced operational toil
Easier handover to teams

[deliverables]

Working pilot

Fixtures

Runbook

Change log

What this step does

Negative tests (timeouts, malformed payloads, 429/5xx)
Load tests (spikes, queues, circuit breakers)
Data integrity checks (drift, nulls, duplicates)
LLM robustness & regression tests
Security checks (scopes, PII redaction)
UAT with business users

[step 4]

Break

Benefits

Reliability under real conditions
Fewer Sev-1 incidents post-launch
Confidence before go-live

[deliverables]

Test report

UAT sign-offs

Issue log with severities

What this step does

Apply fixes; stabilize flaky steps
Monitoring dashboards & alerts
Retry tuning, jitter, DLQ if used
Backfill & replay procedures validated
SLA/SLO defined; error budgets agreed

[step 5]

Harden

Benefits

Production resilience
Faster detection & recovery
Predictable performance

[deliverables]

Dashboards

SLA/SLO

Go-live checklist

Change ticket

What this step does

Phased rollout plan with entry/exit criteria
SOPs, training, troubleshooting guides
Comms plan; help channels
Hypercare & on-call ownership
Rollback drill executed

[step 6]

Launch

Benefits

Smooth adoption with minimal disruption
Clear accountability
Safer go-live window

[deliverables]

SOPs

Training

Rollout & rollback plans

Sign-offs

What this step does

Track KPIs (throughput, success %, latency, cost)
Actionable alerts with context & next actions
Weekly ops review; incidents → backlog
Data QA routines; schema drift checks
Quarterly cost/perf optimization
Versioning cadence for prompts/models

[step 7]

Monitor

Benefits

Continuous improvement loop
Cost control & accuracy retention
Ongoing business confidence

[deliverables]

Ops report

Improvement backlog

Cost & accuracy dashboard

[portfolio]

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