Platform Engineering done well: innovation, efficiency, market advantage - Matthew Skelton - ProductTank Auckland

How can organizations get the full benefits from the discipline of Platform Engineering, popularized by the book ‘Team Topologies’?

The book ‘Team Topologies’ gave a bold new mission to platform engineering: accelerate the flow of value by reducing cognitive load for other teams. The days of slow, bloated, technology-centric platforms are in the past; now, with the fast flow lens provided by Team Topologies, platform engineers have a vital role to play in shaping innovation, operational efficiency, and driving market advantage for the entire organization.

By applying product thinking and fast flow principles to internal platforms of all kinds - technology (cloud, data, AI), but also wikis, how-to guides, and even physical resources - platform engineering teams can act as a force multiplier to detect and anticipate opportunities for first-class shared services.

However, it’s vital that platform engineering efforts pay attention to the social aspects of innovation and knowledge diffusion as part of their work, so that innovations are harvested at the optimal time via “recommoning”. Using techniques like Adapt Together™ and Enabling teams (from ‘Team Topologies’), platform engineering organizations can elevate their role within the organization from mere technologists to drivers of significant business value.

Transcript

1. Platform Engineering done well: innovation, efficiency, market advantage Matthew Skelton Co-author of ‘Team Topologies’ Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux matthewskelton.com K307 ProductTank Auckland, NZ | 25 June 2025
2. Matthew Skelton empowering and augmenting teams using technology Originator of Adapt Together™ by Conflux Co-author of Team Topologies matthewskelton.com 2
3. Challenge: How can Platform Engineering drive innovation, efficiency, market advantage … and why should COO/CFO care? 3
4. More generally: how to persuade COO/CFO that Platform Engineering is a revenue driver, not a cost center 5
5. ❏ Rethink platform fundamentals in terms of flow and innovation ❏ Use gardening as the mental model: foraging, harvesting, recommoning ❏ Consider the social dynamics for the platform as an innovation engine ❏ Real-world examples of platforms as innovation engines 6
6. Platforms: rapid, harvested, curated innovation 7
7. Typical story: the organization questions the value of the platform as somehow “expensive” or even a “cost center” 💵 9
8. Typical story: the organization has multiple parallel uncoordinated innovation initiatives that are financially inefficient 🧪 10
9. Less typical story: the organization must report on effective asset usage by industry sector for fiscal compliance 📊 11
10. Elevate the role of Platform Engineering 12
11. Rethink platform fundamentals in terms of flow and innovation 13
12. Confession: I think ‘platform’ is a terrible word to describe what a platform does 🤷 14
13. Building big technology 15
14. Shared services 16
15. Centralization 17
16. Protectors of Production 18
17. Reduce costs via sharing 19
19. 21 2013-10-22
20. 22 https://web.devopstopologies.com/#type-three
21. 23 “...it probably helps to treat Operations as a team who simply provides the elastic infrastructure on which applications are deployed and run.”
22. 24 2015-02-19
24. 26 Pivotal Cloud Foundry: “With an operational model that provides a clean separation of developer and operator functions, Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides a turnkey PaaS experience for development teams to rapidly update and scale applications that can be instantly expanded and upgraded with no downtime.”
25. 27 2019-09-19
26. Team Topologies Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, September 2019 Over 200k copies sold: EN, DE, JP, CN, KR Order via stores worldwide: teamtopologies.com/book 28
27. 29 Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP) “ the smallest set of APIs, documentation, and tools needed to accelerate teams developing modern software services and systems… ”
28. 30 2024-11-02
29. 31 https://www.puppet.com/resources /state-of-platform-engineering https://humanitec.com/whitepapers/ state-of-platform-engineering-repor t-volume-1
30. A platform should accelerate the flow of value by reducing cognitive load for other teams 32
31. A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform) 33
32. A platform should act as an innovation engine, improving financial efficiency and revenue 34
33. [quick overview] 35
34. 36 Stream-aligned team ➔ Long-lived ➔ End-to-end care and evolution of the service ➔ No hand-offs to other teams ➔ Mix of skills (“cross-functional”) ➔ Small: around 8 people
35. 37 Stream-aligned team ➔ Long-lived ➔ End-to-end care and evolution of the service ➔ No hand-offs to other teams ➔ Mix of skills (“cross-functional”) ➔ Small: around 8 people Flow of change
36. 38 Platform grouping
38. 40 Flow of value
39. 41 Cash Concept Flow of value
40. 42 User Need Flow of value
41. 43 Live service Version control Flow of value
42. 44 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team
43. 45 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😢
44. 46 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😐 Facilitating Enabling team
45. 47 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team 😊 Facilitating Enabling team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS
46. Platform grouping 48 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Collaboration UX
47. Platform grouping 49 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Stream-aligned team xN
48. A platform should accelerate the flow of value by reducing cognitive load for other teams 50
49. A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform) 51
50. Platform grouping 52 Flow of change Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Collaboration Stream-aligned team xN ⚠ Team Topologies diagrams are always just “snapshots in time”, never fixed designs
52. Typical story: the organization has multiple parallel uncoordinated innovation initiatives that are financially inefficient 🧪 54
53. 55 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Unconscious duplication
54. 56 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Unconscious duplication • Rapid innovation 🤗 • Isolated innovation 😶 • Duplication innovation 😖 • Rapid, isolated, duplicated innovation 🤬
55. 57 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Unconscious duplication Rapid, harvested, curated innovation 😍😍😍
56. Use gardening as the mental model: foraging, harvesting, recommoning 58
60. 62 foraging: finding things that are ‘out there’ 🔍
61. 63 harvesting: collecting those things together ✂
62. 64 recommoning: making those things available to many 🫴
63. 65 🫴 Recommon Forage 🔍 Harvest ✂ Platform Innovation Cycle
64. 66 🫴 Recommon Forage 🔍 Harvest ✂ Platform Innovation Cycle New products ‘fertilized’
65. Platform grouping 67 Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team XaaS XaaS Stream-aligned team xN
68. 70 Platforms can choose whether or not to harvest (adopt) a service from outside the platform
69. 71 Teams and services outside the platform can choose whether or not to use the platform
71. 73 Platform chooses whether to harvest services Services choose whether to use the platform
72. Consider the social dynamics for the platform as an innovation engine 74
73. Hire for adaptability first and technology second. 🎯 75 “...any digital technology we introduce now is likely to be obsolete in five years, three years, 18 months. So … [when] introducing technology … [we need to] to expect it to disappear within a very short space of time” – Matthew Skelton
74. Avoid “skills gravity” via smart hiring, cross-training, incentives, deliberate obsolescence, … 76
75. If we have clear boundaries for flow, with limited interactions, how do we create alignment? How do we learn from each other at pace? How do we find the services to harvest and recommon? 78
76. 79 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value
77. 80 Multiple, independent flows, fractally Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
78. 81 Active diffusion of knowledge across team boundaries
79. 82 Alignment and engagement “High performers favor strategies that create community structures at both low and high levels in the organization...”
80. 83 internal conferences guilds Communities of Practice lunch & learn public blogs
81. 84 internaltechconf.com Internal Tech Conferences Victoria Morgan-Smith and Matthew Skelton
82. 85 “This initiative around internal conferences has been the single most effective thing to align business and technology that I have seen in this organization” – Murray Hennessey, CEO, (UK retail co)
83. 87 “The way that the Conflux crew used their active knowledge diffusion approach to seek out and champion good practices was a real revelation to us at TELUS and helped to shift thinking around how we innovate and share successes.” – Steven Tannock, Director, Architecture (Platform Technology & Tools) at TELUS Digital
84. Active knowledge diffusion across the organization 88
85. Active knowledge diffusion across organizational boundaries helps increase alignment, engagement, trust … AND find services to harvest and recommon 90
86. Real-world examples of platforms as innovation engines 92
87. Amazon and AWS 93
88. 94 https://joapen.com/blog/2022/09/03/amazon-strategy/ Innovation - Leverage - Commoditize
89. Spotify 95
90. 96 https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/08/how-we-improv ed-developer-productivity-for-our-devops-teams/ How We Improved Developer Productivity for Our DevOps Teams
91. SG.GOV 98
93. 100 forward deployment of capability
94. Stock market asset reporting 103
95. Less typical story: the organization must report on effective asset usage by industry sector for fiscal compliance 📊 104
97. Banks, Investments, FinServ 107
99. 109 Admit it: duplication *will* happen. Harvest it when it appears.
100. The sad story of a 10-year old Cassandra cluster 110
101. 111 (Running a global-scale Cassandra cluster in 2025 - in-house) 😰🥵🤯
102. So what can help with “platform as innovation engine”? 112
103. Wardley Maps 113 https://blog.gardeviance.org/2016/11/amazon-is-eating-software-which-is.html
104. Core Domain Charts 114 https://github.com/ddd-crew/core-domain-charts
105. Team Topologies 115 Platform grouping Flow of value Stream-aligned team Stream-aligned team Complicated Subsystem team Xa aS Xa aS Stream-aligned team xN Enabling team Enabling team Enabling teams
106. Adapt Together™ 116 Flow of value Active knowledge diffusion
107. 117 Unbundling the Enterprise https://itrevolution.com/product/unbundling-the-enterprise/ By Stephen Fishman, Matt McLarty APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents (Includes value dynamics calculations)
108. Summary 118
109. Challenge: How can Platform Engineering drive innovation, efficiency, market advantage … and why should COO/CFO care? 119
110. ❏ Rethink platform fundamentals in terms of flow and innovation ❏ Use gardening as the mental model: foraging, harvesting, recommoning ❏ Consider the social dynamics for the platform as an innovation engine ❏ Real-world examples of platforms as innovation engines 120
111. Platforms: rapid, harvested, curated innovation 121
112. Hire for adaptability first and technology second. 🎯 122
113. 124 The Adapt Together™ approach from Conflux creates alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow. adapttogether.info Team Topologies is the leading approach to organizing business and technology teams for fast flow, providing a practical, step-by‑step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction. teamtopologies.com
114. Moving towards a “not-for-profit core” + an entrepreneurial ecosystem 125 5+ years since publication of ‘Team Topologies’
115. 126 adapttogether.info Create alignment, trust, and engagement across your organization whilst delivering at pace with fast flow.
116. let’s work together 127 matthewskelton.com