This talk was presented in the 2023 DevopsDays conference in Melbourne. In this talk Leoren Tesaluna and Javier Turegano shared some of the lessons learned from building internal DevOps platforms applying product thinking techniques as well as some engineering tips to do this effectively.

1. Sprinkle your
DevOps platform
with
product thinking
Javier Turegano
Leoren Tesaluna

2. Javier Leoren
BEDROCK COLAB
Cloudkit
Resource
Deployers

3. What’s a platform?
“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

4. Platform team
mission
The Platform team mission is to “provide a compelling
internal product to accelerate delivery by stream-aligned
teams.”

5. Who is using/building internal developer platforms?
Companies of all sizes are investing in using or
building internal developer platforms.
As your company scales the benefits of a developer
platform will potentially grow.

6. Evolution in the
Thoughtworks
Radar
Platform
Engineering
product teams
Assess - 2017
Trial -2020
Adopt - 2021
Incremental
development
platform
Trial - 2022
https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-au/radar/techniques/platform-engineering-product-teams

7. Mapping your platform teams
Courtesy of
Adrian Cockcroft
Web Platform Team
Developer Experience
Platform Team
Container Platform Team
Datacentre platform team

8. Mapping your platform teams
Bedrock Platform Team
Developer Experience
Enabling Team
Traffic Team
Database
Team
Web Platform Team

9. Who are the
customers /
partners of your
internal
platform? Eng Team A Eng Team B
Eng Team C Eng Team D

10. Why internal
platforms?

11. Some
advantages of
an internal
platform
● Reduce cognitive load 🧠
● Reduce duplication 󰮘
● Standardization across teams 󰚢
● Developer efficiency ⏩
● Increase reliability 🪨
● Enforce security / compliance rules 🔒
● Sustainable support model 🤝

12. What are some of the pitfalls when
you are creating your internal
platform or developer tooling?

13. Some pitfalls of
building
platforms
● Build it and they’ll come ⏰
● Focus on the wrong type of user 😔
● Mandate / Captive Market 🏛
● Platform team becomes a blocker 🛑
● Not catering for the advanced user 🔧
● Too much abstraction 🪄

14. Some product
techniques for
your platform

15. Product
Thinking to the
rescue
What feature for our platform should we build next?
Let’s look at a few factors to prioritize our backlog.
Platform PM Platform Engineers

16. Working closely
with your
users/customers
and stakeholders
Platform Engineers
Team A Team B
Executive
Sponsors
Platform PM
🧠
⚙
⚙
Functional areas

17. User Experience
Interviews
Ex. “Can you show us how do you add 1
line of code to your service and release
it to production?”

18. User Experience
Interviews
Tip1: Lean on experts
from within the
business.
Tip2: Get the platform
engineers to
participate as
interviewers

19. User surveys

20. NPS (Net promoter score)
NPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors

21. Customer love sprints

22. Phase 1
Dog food in the
platform team
Phase 2
Beta - release
to a subgroup
Phase 3
Everyone but
only Dev /
Staging
Phase 4
Prod - All
internal users
Dog Fooding / Feature flags

23. Promote new
features within
your product
Ex. Debug Actions

24. Team A -
representative
Forming a User Advisory Group
A Newby
Platform Engineer
Team B -
representative
A Detractor
Principal Engineer /
Architect
Representing
functional area
Platform Product
Manager
Executive sponsor

25. User Advisory Group (examples)

26. Built-in analytics
“When building internal products don't leave your adoption / usage analytics as an
afterthought, build this early as part of your initial feature set. It will pay off down the
track.” - @setoide
Executive sponsor PM
Yes, but…
who is using
it?

27. Value stream mapping
COMMIT REVIEWED
BUILT
SCANNED
TESTED LIVE
“Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing technique to analyze, design, and
manage the flow of materials and information required to bring a product to a
customer. “ - Wikipedia
3h
5m
10m
10m
75%
1h

28. Platform tips from
an Engineering
perspective

29. Additional
Platform tips
● Get customers to collaborate 🤝
● Work in your customer’s language 💬
● Celebrate adaptations & collaborations 🎉
● 80-20% Rule 👌
● Provide training 📚

30. Training
materials - Try
new formats!
● Training video
● Temporary team-embedded engineers
● Bootcamps

31. Self paced
Training
materials
💪

32. Recap

33. Main takeaways ● A good developer platform can make your development
teams more productive and happy
● There are some pitfalls to avoid when thinking about
building your platform. Applying product thinking and
working closely with your users is critical for your success
● We have explored some of the product thinking
techniques that you can apply when building your
platform
● We have also shared some engineering tips on how to
succeed in your platform adventures

34. Let’s discuss!

35. Some ideas for discussion
in Open Spaces 🌶🌶🌶

36. Thank you!
Javier Turegano
jturegano
@setoide
Leoren Tesaluna
leoren-tesaluna
@leorenanne