This article was originally published on The New Stack.
Platform engineering is taking the cloud native world by storm, but there’s still much to learn about building successful platforms. This challenge might feel overwhelming at first, but there’s one powerful approach that makes getting started simpler: the platform as a product approach.
Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs). According to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) platforms white paper, an IDP is:
“… a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge, and support … arranged as a compelling internal product. Autonomous delivery teams can make use of the platform to deliver product features at a higher pace, with reduced coordination.”
To succeed, platform teams must build an IDP that is both effective and compelling. Effective platforms solve real problems for developers, managers, and executives. But effectiveness alone isn’t enough to drive adoption. Platform teams must architect and market the IDP so developers want to use it. The platform as a product approach helps platform teams identify what an effective and compelling IDP looks like for their organization.
What Is Platform as a Product?
The idea that platforms should be treated as products dates back to Evan Bottcher’s 2018 article “What I Talk About When I Talk About Platforms”:
“A key ingredient for success in finding this balance is that platforms must be compelling to use, they cannot stand on a mandate alone.”
“Team Topologies” co-authors Manuel Pais and Matthew Skelton have expanded upon platform product management.
The platform as a product approach involves defining your mission, doing user research, using the minimum viable product (MVP) and thinnest viable platform (TVP) to allocate internal resources efficiently, and marketing your platform internally to secure buy-in. Here’s what practitioners in the platform engineering community have shared about their experience.
1. Define Your Mission
New platform teams often encounter conflicting perspectives on their domain’s responsibilities, how to collaborate with other teams, and what success looks like. Creating a mission statement can help define the platform team’s identity. At Doma, Michael Galloway’s team interviewed developers, spoke to other stakeholder groups, and evaluated quantitative performance metrics to identify their purpose: “make it fast and easy to build great products”.
Strong mission statements are like good pop songs: they’re simple, meaningful, and make people feel something. “For a purpose to work, you have to feel it, not just know it”, says Galloway.
2. Do Your Research
Building a platform that solves real problems and wins developers’ hearts requires a deep understanding of their workflows, challenges, and how existing solutions fall short. Successful platform teams use various types of user research and feedback to inform their IDP roadmap. They strike a balance between the quantity and quality of feedback by choosing low- and high-touch research methods.
- Low touch: Surveys quickly and efficiently gather broad sentiment and identify common pain points from a large developer pool.
- Medium touch: Requests for Comments (RFCs) and individual interviews are more time-consuming but empower developers to elaborate on specific issues and propose solutions.
- High touch: Embedding platform advocates or enablement teams directly within development teams provide the richest feedback and context. This approach allows for real-time observation of workflows and firsthand experience of developer frustrations.
According to OpenCredo’s Nicki Watt, a technical platform product manager plays a crucial role here. They act as translators, synthesizing potentially conflicting perspectives into an actionable roadmap. They’ll do the work to understand what developers want and build something developers need.
Remember, user research shouldn’t be a one-time activity. It’s a continuous process throughout the platform’s life cycle. By consistently gathering feedback, platform teams can ensure the platform remains relevant and addresses evolving business needs.
3. Build a Minimum Viable Product and Maintain the Thinnest Viable Platform
Platforms have infinite potential, but platform teams have limited resources. Minimum viable product (MVP) and thinnest viable platform (TVP) are concepts that help optimally allocate those resources.
With an MVP approach, platform teams create the most basic version of the product required to get user feedback. MVPs help platform teams validate core assumptions and avoid wasting resources on unnecessary or ineffective features. Self-service documentation can be an MVP.
TVP is a complementary concept introduced by Skelton and Pais:
“The smallest set of APIs, documentation, and tools needed to accelerate the teams developing modern software services and systems.”
What constitutes a TVP naturally evolves over time. As third-party solutions become competitive with an organization’s internal tooling, platform teams must choose between maintaining built components or outsourcing to a vendor. With a TVP approach, platform teams allocate internal resources to only what provides unique business value.
