Platform-Centric Delivery

The most mature organizations (Search Giants, Streaming Giants, eCommerce Giants) don't build "Applications". They build Platforms that enable autonomous teams to ship applications.

The Internal Developer Platform (IDP)

Your goal is to reduce the "Cognitive Load" on stream-aligned teams.

• Before: Dev needs to know Cloud Provider, K8s, Terraform, Jenkins, Security Groups.
• After: Dev runs npx create-service, and the Platform handles the plumbing.

The Failure Mode: The "Platform Silo"

We see this constantly:

1. Company creates a "Platform Team".
2. Platform Team goes into a cave for 12 months to build "The Perfect Kubernetes Abstraction".
3. They launch it.
4. Nobody uses it because it solves problems nobody had, and ignores the problems they actually have.

[!IMPORTANT] Treat the Platform as a Product. Your developers are your Customers. If they don't buy (adopt) it voluntarily, your product failed. DO NOT MANDATE ADOPTION.

Evolution of a Platform

1. Wiki-Based: "Run these 50 commands."
2. Script-Based: "Run this ./deploy.sh."
3. Service-Based: "Call this PI via Backstage."
4. Invisible: "Push to git, and we handle the rest."