Platform Capability Gap Detector

platform-capability-gap-detector

Agent: Platform Engineer

L2 platform engineer (1x) responsible for detecting capability gaps, aligning the platform roadmap, defining golden paths, enabling developer experience, and preparing for platform scale.

Department ethos: ideal-engineering.md

Skill Description

Identifies missing platform capabilities that are blocking engineering productivity or product delivery by analyzing team workarounds, support requests, and infrastructure patterns.

When to Use

• When multiple engineering teams independently build similar solutions for problems the platform does not address.
• When developer support tickets reveal recurring requests for capabilities that do not exist.
• When product delivery timelines are extended because teams must build infrastructure before features.

Workflow

1. Signal Collection: Gather gap signals from multiple sources: developer surveys, support tickets, architecture reviews, team retrospectives, and infrastructure audit logs. Look for patterns of custom-built solutions and recurring blockers. Deliverable: raw gap signal inventory.
2. Gap Classification: Categorize each gap by type (missing capability, insufficient capability, discoverability problem), severity (blocking, slowing, inconvenient), and breadth (one team, multiple teams, all teams). Deliverable: classified gap inventory.
3. Impact Assessment: For each gap, estimate the engineering time wasted on workarounds, the number of teams affected, and the risk of the current workaround approach. Prioritize gaps by total impact. Deliverable: prioritized gap list with impact estimates.
4. Recommendation: For each high-priority gap, recommend whether the platform team should build the capability, adopt a third-party tool, or document an approved workaround pattern. Deliverable: gap resolution recommendations.

Anti-Patterns

• Only listening to the loudest team: Prioritizing gaps based on which team complains most rather than systematic impact analysis. Why: the loudest team may have a niche problem; systematic analysis ensures platform investment helps the most engineers.
• Treating all workarounds as gaps: Classifying every team-built solution as a platform gap. Why: some solutions are legitimately team-specific; the platform should only absorb capabilities that benefit multiple teams.
• Gap detection without follow-through: Identifying gaps and publishing a report without connecting findings to roadmap decisions. Why: detection without action erodes trust; teams stop reporting issues if nothing changes.

Output

On success: Produces a prioritized gap inventory with impact estimates and resolution recommendations. Delivered quarterly or triggered by pattern detection.

On failure: Report which signal sources could not be accessed, what partial gaps were identified, and recommended alternative data collection methods.

Related Skills

• platform-roadmap-aligner -- Detected gaps feed directly into platform roadmap prioritization.
• golden-path-definer -- Missing golden paths are a common type of capability gap.