DevOps Without Product Ownership: A Postmortem

The Setup

A Logistics giant decided to "do DevOps". They built a world-class Kubernetes platform, hired strict SREs, and automated every deployment. The "How" was perfect. The "What" was missing.

What Went Wrong

The "Platform" Silo: The Platform team built tools that the Product teams didn't understand and didn't ask for.
Ghost Products: Developers pushed code fast, but because Product Managers weren't involved in the feedback loop, they pushed the wrong features fast.
On-Call Mutiny: Developers were told "You build it, you run it", but they weren't given the authority to prioritize technical debt fix. They burned out.

Early Warning Signs

Ticket Throwing: The Platform team demanded tickets to whitelist IPs, effectively becoming a new SysAdmin silo.
Shadow IT: Product teams secretly spun up Cloud Provider accounts to bypass the "Official Platform" because it was too rigid.

Decision Matrix: Why it Stalled

Factor

Rating

Reality Check

Tech Excellence

High

The Kubernetes clusters were immaculate.

User Value

Low

Features didn't land any faster for the customer.

Morale

Low

SREs hated the Devs; Devs hated the Platform.

What Winners Did Differently

Companies like Music Streaming Giants/Streaming Giants understand that internal developer platforms (IDP) must be treated as a product. The Platform team's metrics should be "Developer Net Promoter Score", not just "Uptime".

Interactive Postmortem Analysis

Decision Node: root