"The Platform Knows Best" Smell

Here's the idea: the Platform team provides internal customers with best-in-class technologies to make teams more efficient. The understated argument is: "Build it, and they will come."

An overfocus on technologies results in sub-par adoption and lower productivity organizationally. So, if it were as easy as making a new piece of technology available, why doesn't it result in happier and more productive engineers?

Ben Voss @benvoss

The goal of internal developer platforms is not to improve developer effectiveness. Thinking this as the goal is wrong and produces misaligned incentives. That responsibility is on the engineer and engineering management, not an internal developer platform.

If Engineering leadership is on the hook to hire, train, and retain great engineers, then their productivity isn't the Platform's primary concern; it's theirs. Negatively impacting their productivity is something the Platform should care about, though.

If engineering teams determine the upper bounds of their productivity, Platform Engineering should aim to keep them as close to that as possible.

There are two cultures where I've seen this occur (though there are likely other situations, and things aren't so black-and-white). The first is having an overgrown engineering culture due to a weak product culture. The second begins in senior management that thrives on "standardization." There is a desire to see all teams as the same. Thus Platform Engineering should provide the best-in-class paved path. Weak product representation also encourages this.

Standardization always has wrinkles since each team will have changes in staffing, business requirements, delivery goals, technologies, or management. Usually, Platform Engineering should care about standardizing the "negative space" engineers don't have expertise within, yet the organization needs.

Ben Voss @benvoss

The goal of an internal developer platform is to represent the company's interests of security, compliance, spend, and availability in a way that provides the least amount of friction with the engineer. Most platforms start a "golden or paved path" which works until it doesn't.

This alignment of incentives aids product thinking in Platforms. For example, when engineering teams determine self-effectiveness, they are more likely to produce measurement data or evidence, and the data is relevant to the business.

When enforcing corporate standards, we can identify the cost differential to a team based on their value criteria. Knowing what they value and how they measure it is a considerable advantage for the product development of developer platforms.