Savvy organizations are discovering the value of treating their internal platforms as products. But what does it mean to treat a "platform as a product"? What benefits does this give, and why would an organization adopt this approach? In this talk, Manuel Pais, co-author of the book Team Topologies, explains why the platform-as-product approach can be a game-changer for organizations building and running software-enabled products and services. Using ideas & patterns from Team Topologies - including Thinnest Viable Platform, team cognitive load, and the evolutionary team interaction modes - Manuel explains how organizations like Uswitch and Adidas have successfully used the platform-as-product model to accelerate and simplify the delivery of software at scale.

1. TeamTopologies.com
@TeamTopologies
What is
Platform as a Product?
Clues from Team Topologies
Manuel Pais
co-author of Team Topologies
DevOps Porto - 31 Mar 2022
@manupaisable

2. Team Topologies
5
Organizing business and
technology teams for fast flow
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2019
teamtopologies.com/book

3. “innovative tools and concepts for
structuring the next generation
digital operating model”
Charles T. Betz,
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
6

4. Remote Team Interactions
Workbook
7
Using Team Topologies
Patterns for Remote Working
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
IT Revolution Press, 2022
Available to pre-order now
teamtopologies.com/workbook

5. “extends the original book with
valuable exercises to setup your
teams effectively for a
Remote First world”
Stefan van Oirschot,
Chief Digital Advisor at Red Hat
8

6. What is “Platform as a
Product” and why should I
adopt this approach?
9

7. 10
What is a Platform?
What is a Product?
Examples: P-as-a-P
Getting Started

8. What is a Platform?
11

9. “A digital platform is a foundation of
self-service APIs, tools, services,
knowledge and support which are
arranged as a compelling internal
product.”
– Evan Bottcher, 2018
12
Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/talk-about-platforms.html

10. “Create a path of
least resistance.
Make the right thing
the easiest thing to do.”
– Evan Bottcher, 2018
24

11. 25
https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report
Jul 2021

12. 26
“Not every platform team is automatically
successful, but the successful ones treat
their platform as a product.”

13. 27
“need to address organizational and team
aspects, namely helping teams clarify their
mission, primary customers, interfaces, and
what makes for healthy team interactions”

14. 28

15. 29

16. 30

17. 31
strong collaboration with
stream-aligned teams for
any new service or evolution
Platform Behaviors

18. 32

19. 33
provide support and great
documentation for stable
services
Platform Behaviors

20. 34

21. 35

22. 52
Thinnest Viable Platform

23. 53

24. 56
Thinnest Viable Platform
A small, curated set of complementary
services or patterns to use together to
simplify and accelerate delivery.
“Use these N services in these ways...”
Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

25. A good platform is just
“big enough” but no bigger
57

26. What is a Product?
66

27. “product (...) is anything that can
be offered to a market to satisfy
the desire or need of a customer”
- Wikipedia
67
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business)

28. Product = Holistic User Experience
➔ Functionality
➔ Design
➔ Monetization
➔ Content
– Marty Cagan, 2010
68
Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/

29. 69
A product is optional to
use - no-one is forced to
use the product

30. 70

31. 71
A product is carefully
designed and curated

32. 72

33. 73
A product simplifies
something for users

34. 74

35. 75
A product evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

36. 76

37. 77
s/product/platform/g

38. 78
A platform is optional to
use - no team is forced to
use the platform

39. 79
Platforms must advocate
for their platform
product and “market” it
to internal teams

40. 80
A platform is carefully
designed and curated

41. 81
Platforms must be
designed with the user in
mind (internal teams) -
focus on UX and DevEx

42. 82
A platform simplifies
something for users

43. 83
Platforms must help
users to achieve goals by
understanding user
needs and simplifying
tasks & workflows

44. 84
A platform evolves to take
advantage of technology
changes

45. 85
Platforms must evolve
the capabilities they
offer (adding/removing)
with a clear roadmap or
trajectory

46. 86
A platform needs modern
product management
(and service management)

47. Examples:
Platform as a Product
98

48. Case
Study
99

49. 101
Flow of change

50. 102
Low-level AWS service calls (EC2, IAM, STS, Autoscaling, etc.) from January 2015 to January 2017

51. “People were spending more time
having to interact with relatively
low-level services thus spending
their time on relatively low-value
decisions.”
- Paul Ingles
103

52. “We didn’t change our organization
because we wanted to use
Kubernetes, we used Kubernetes
because we wanted to change
our organization.”
- Paul Ingles
104

53. 105
Low-level AWS service calls since Kubernetes adoption in January 2017

54. “We wanted to scale our teams but
maintain the principles of what
helped us move fast: autonomy,
work with minimal coordination,
self-service infrastructure.”
- Paul Ingles
111

55. 118
2018
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)

56. 119
2018
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2019
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

57. 122
...
Addressed critical
cross-functional
needs (GDPR,
security, alerts +
SLOs as a service)
Finally adopted by
the highest eng
maturity & biz
revenue team
2018
Infra platform
started with few
services
First customer
(centralized
logging, metrics,
auto scaling)
2019
Started using SLAs
and SLOs, clarifying
reliability/latency/etc
Growing traffic in
platform vs AWS

58. 125
Flow of change

59. Case
Study
126

60. Case
Study
127
https://videos.itrevolution.com/watch/431737448/

61. Case
Study
128
https://videos.itrevolution.com/watch/431737448/

62. 129
https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/08/27/how-we-improved-developer-productivity-for-our-devops-teams/

63. What is “Platform as a
Product” and why should I
adopt this approach?
130

64. 136
Happier users (engineers)
Reduced cognitive load
No technology bloat
Designed to evolve

65. Resources
141
teamtopologies.com/learn
(links, slides, video)
teamtopologies.com/examples
(Uswitch, Croz, NAV, Improbable)

66. Infographics
● Getting Started
● In a Nutshell
144
teamtopologies.com/infographics

67. Platform Learning Path

68. 148
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
Copyright © Conflux Digital Ltd and FlowOnRails 2018-2022. All rights reserved.
teamtopologies.com