itsual Platform Engineering
Overview
Platform engineering treats internal developer experience as a product. The goal is to make the right thing the easy thing.
When to Use
- Multiple teams need the same capabilities (CI, deployment, observability, environments)
- Cognitive load on product teams is too high
- You want consistent standards without heavy central bottlenecks
Key Ideas
- Golden paths / paved roads
- Self-service over tickets where possible
- Clear platform interfaces and documentation
- Measuring adoption and developer satisfaction
- Balancing flexibility with sensible defaults
Principles
- Platform teams have customers (internal developers)
- Reduce toil and cognitive load, don’t just add tools
- Prefer enabling over gatekeeping
Verification
- Product teams can self-serve common needs quickly
- Standards are mostly followed because the platform makes them easy
- Platform adoption and satisfaction are measured