Tag: platform
The Compelling Platform
01 November 2022
Tags : platform, platform as product, openshift
The Compelling Platform
“Build it and they will come !” - 1989 movie Field of Dreams.
A key ingredient for success when building a platform is that it must be compelling to use. What makes a platform compelling ?
- The platform is self-service for the overwhelming majority of use cases.
- The platform is composable, containing discrete services that can be used independently.
- The platform does not force an inflexible way of working upon the delivery team.
- The platform is quick and cheap to start using, with an easy on-ramp (e.g. Quick start guides, documentation, code samples)
- The platform has a rich internal user community for sharing
- The platform is secure and compliant by default
- The platform is up to date
- The platform is the thinnest viable
A platform should also be more than just software and APIs - it is documentation, and consulting, and support and evangelism, and templates and guidelines.
You must also move away from project as the primary mechanism for funding and staffing delivery of technology. Platform is a product, and needs a long-lived and stable team tasked with both build and run.
Define Platform
“A platform is a curated experience for the customer of the platform (engineers)” - Matthew Skelton.
“A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product. Autonomous delivery teams can make use of the platform to deliver product features at a higher pace, with reduced co-ordination.” - Evan Botcher.
What it is NOT:
- It is not the limited virtualised hosting and locked-down centrally-managed tooling that you already have.
- It is not just OpenShift, Ansible or RHEL by themselves.
- The fattest platform in the world.
The starting point is to “Use these N services in these ways …” - this is a curated experience.
The Thinnest Viable Platform is a small, curated set of complementary services or patterns used together to simplify and accelerate delivery.
The platform will evolve and its design should meet common team interaction modes.
