Adopt a product mindset

We manage like a product … Our team is focusing on answering [development team] questions that have nothing to do with [their application’s] business case. - Mark, platform engineering lead, Large European Multinational Retail Company

This quote is a great example of a platform engineering organization with a product mindset. This team builds tools and capabilities that developers need and want so that they can handle operational security, compliance, and other requirements that are critical. These requirements aren't directly tied to the business reason why the development team was initially formed. Instead, these tools are the critical glue between development and operations.

Some of today’s most successful companies follow a product led growth (PLG) strategy, where you use your product as the primary way to acquire, retain, and grow customers. Companies like Figma and Shopify use this customer-focused approach to drive their products. But what does this have to do with platform engineering? The goal is for your internal developer platform to bring enough value that its adoption and use go viral within your company. Teams working on platform engineering need to think of themselves as product owners of the internal developer platform, and developers as the end customer.

These customers should want to use your platform, but not be mandated to use it.

To entice developers, you'll need to create delightful developer experiences while at the same time enabling operators to easily collaborate with their development counterparts. One way to help you understand what your different internal customers and stakeholders want or need is to test your hypotheses using a customer development process.

Learn more about adopting a product mindset.

Measuring success

While not everything about the details of the PLG model might apply to you, the mindset shift does, along with the idea that you should define a way to measure success with data. As you begin your platform engineering journey, you'll want to establish consistent metrics you use to ensure that your platform is effective and helps you retain talent.

Generally, you’ll want to measure how your platform helps with speed (time to deliver business value), product quality, and the platform’s ease of use. You'll also want to measure whether your internal customers aren't only satisfied, but thriving. The information you distill from these metrics you collect will help steer your next set of investments. Capability retention and usage metrics can then help you determine how much specific investments affected your overall numbers.

Learn more about measuring success.

Empower developers through self-service