From Fragile to Antifragile Internal Platforms @ DevOps Days Portugal, Sep 2024

Internal platforms are generally understood as a necessity in most organizations today. However, results are often underwhelming and the investment in internal platforms becomes hard to measure or justify. This makes internal platforms fragile and susceptible to economic downturns, changes in funding models or leadership focus.

So what is needed to make internal platforms antifragile?

“Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.”

Of course, the platform as a product approach is critical to help focus and prioritize (internal) customer needs. Continuously understanding the platform audience, building trust, and reducing blind spots are required to thrive.

But sustainable platforms need to be able to withstand financial shocks as well. We need to deal with the reality that (end customer) products (usually) have clear revenue and unclear costs while internal platforms (usually) have clear costs and unclear revenue. How do we avoid naïve/biased approaches to demonstrate platform value which overlook the costs? How do we show the value as perceived by decision makers that might be sitting 2 or 3 degrees away in the organization?

Antifragile internal platforms grow on trust and 360º transparency in order to survive the inevitable stressors, failures, and misunderstandings. Chances are that mandates, blind standardization, and fuzzy “productivity” goals, among other issues, are eroding the trust foundations that are needed for platform sustainability in your organization.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies From Fragile to Antifragile Internal Platforms Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies DevOpsDays Portugal - 23 Sep 2024 @manupaisable Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash
2. Team Topologies 2 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book Over 175.000 copies sold
3. 4 A product has clear revenue and unclear costs (usually)
4. 5 A platform (as a product) has clear costs and unclear revenue (usually)
5. 6 clarify platform value (and product costs) Photo by Piret Ilver on Unsplash
6. 7 A valuable platform reduces the cognitive load of stream-aligned teams.
7. teamperature.com
8. 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwaRKcjkAAo
9. 10 The platform acts as an engine for fast flow by increasing capacity & speed of engineering teams
10. 11 Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
11. 12 Establishing solid platform engineering is a journey, requires long term funding.
12. 13 https://financialdesignstudio.com/understanding-stock-market-and-economic-cycles
13. 14 Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Fragile platforms
14. “ Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.” Nassim Taleb 15
15. 16 Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Stressor #1: Unhappy internal customers
16. 17 Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Stressor #1: Unhappy internal customers Stressor #2: Hard to quantify business impact
17. 18 Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Stressor #1: Unhappy internal customers Stressor #2: Hard to quantify business impact Stressor #3: Decision makers unaware of platform value
18. Four pillars for platform sustainability 19
19. 20 1. Platform is being used (Adoption) 2. Platform is reliable (Reliability) 3. Users (engineers) are happy (User Satisfaction) Platform Success Metrics
20. 21 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability
21. 22 1 Trusted platform Platform (services and team s) is trusted by product team s 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability
22. 23 1 Trusted platform Platform (services and team s) is trusted by product team s 2 Shared success stories Successes using the platform need to be shared w idely 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability
23. 24 1 Trusted platform Platform (services and team s) is trusted by product team s 2 Shared success stories Successes using the platform need to be shared w idely 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability 4 External confidence P&L m etrics around ROI, cost (control), tim e to m arket, flow
24. 25 1 Trusted platform Platform (services and team s) is trusted by product team s 2 Shared success stories Successes using the platform need to be shared w idely 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability 4 External confidence P&L m etrics around ROI, cost (control), tim e to m arket, flow
25. 26 1 Trusted platform Platform (services and team s) is trusted by product team s 2 Shared success stories Successes using the platform need to be shared w idely 3 Internal confidence M etrics on platform adoption, user satisfaction, reliability 4 External confidence P&L m etrics around ROI, cost (control), tim e to m arket, flow Qualitative Quantitative
26. 27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwaRKcjkAAo
27. 28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwaRKcjkAAo BIZ LANGUAGE
29. 30 • teams onboard the platform • applications using the platform • traffic served by the platform Adoption Metrics
30. 31 • teams onboard the platform • applications using the platform • traffic served by the platform • revenue served through platform services 👀👀👀 Adoption Metrics
32. 33 • new engineers shipping to production on week 1 Shared Success Stories
33. 34 • new engineers shipping to production on week 1 • reduced cloud costs by 10% across services thanks to cheaper instances 👀👀👀 Shared Success Stories
34. 35 Focus on the “last mile” of platform as a product: measure generated value.
35. 36 Understand business cycles and incentives for funding.
36. 37 Show past ROI and (forecast) future value of platform.
37. “ transforming internal platforms from mere technical solutions into strategic assets, fostering a collective understanding and appreciation across stakeholders” Sridhar Kotagiri & Ajay Chankramath 38 Measuring the Value of Your Internal Developer Platform Investments
38. 40 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd 2024. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com/ platform-engineering “Platform Engineering as a Way of Thinking and Team-of-Teams Design”