Platform Engineering Series | EP 5: Top 3 Challenges Building Your IDP

Summary

This video discusses the top three challenges faced by platform engineering teams: prioritizing user needs over feature overload, estimating operational costs for resource allocation, and managing software catalogs. It suggests focusing on minimal viable products, understanding user workflows, automating catalog updates, and fostering a culture that motivates teams to keep the catalog current. The video emphasizes the importance of a strategic approach to delivering a valuable platform that aligns with organizational goals.

Takeaways

• 🎯 Focus on delivering a platform that solves specific user problems rather than trying to integrate too many tools at once.
• 🔍 Sharpen product skills to understand how users will benefit from the platform and identify their main challenges and needs.
• 🚀 Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to establish a clear goal and target for the platform's development.
• 💼 Allocate sufficient resources, including a dedicated platform engineering team, to ensure the platform's success.
• 💰 Estimate operational costs accurately, including headcount, cloud infrastructure budget, and integration with other teams' tools and services.
• 📊 Understand the trade-offs between building, buying, or using managed services for your platform's components.
• 🔄 Automate the software catalog management process to reduce the burden on users and keep the catalog up-to-date.
• 🔒 Enforce catalog updates as part of the development process to ensure accuracy and consistency.
• 📈 Drive user motivation by making the catalog a standard part of the organization's scorecard or production readiness criteria.
• 📧 Use communication strategies, such as emails, to encourage teams to update their catalog entries regularly.
• 📌 Define a clear strategy for managing the software catalog to ensure long-term success and user adoption.

Q & A

What are the top three challenges for platform engineering teams?

The top three challenges are: 1) Getting zero birds with one stone, which means trying to provide everything and ending up with nothing useful for users. 2) Estimation of building and operational cost, which involves allocating resources, budget, and integrating with other teams. 3) Building and managing a software catalog, which requires ongoing effort and involvement from various teams.

How can platform engineering teams ensure they are solving the right problems for their users?

Teams should sharpen their product skills, understand how users will benefit from the platform, and focus on solving specific challenges for users. They need to identify the main stakeholders and their needs, and tailor the platform to address those needs effectively.

What is the importance of having a dedicated platform engineering team?

A dedicated team ensures long-term goals and vision for the internal developer platform. They have the knowledge and experience to build and deliver a high-quality platform. The team size and duration of their commitment should be carefully considered based on the organization's needs.

How can platform engineering teams estimate the minimum valuable product (MVP) for their platform?

Teams should focus on solving a single, critical problem initially. By delivering an MVP that addresses a specific user need, they can ensure the platform is valuable and resource allocation is more manageable.

What are the options for managing operational costs when building a platform?

Options include building everything from scratch, using open-source solutions like Backstage, or adopting managed services that offer a ready-to-use internal developer platform with managed features out of the box.

How can platform engineering teams motivate other teams to update and maintain the software catalog?

Teams can automate the process to fetch live information, enforce updates as part of the CI/CD process, drive cultural adoption by making catalog usage a standard, or use scorecards to incentivize updates. In some cases, organizations may also resort to shaming teams that do not update their catalog, although this method is not preferred.

Why is it crucial for platform engineering teams to align with management regarding resource allocation?

Alignment ensures that the necessary resources are available for the platform's development and maintenance. It helps in delivering a quality and valuable platform that meets the organization's needs and expectations.

What is the role of product skills in platform engineering?

Product skills are essential for understanding user needs, defining a successful platform, and delivering value. They help in identifying the main challenges for users and stakeholders, which in turn guides the platform's development and features.

How can platform engineering teams balance the trade-off between building and buying solutions for their platform?

Teams should consider the organization's specific needs, available resources, and long-term goals. They should evaluate the time and effort required to build from scratch versus the benefits of using open-source or managed solutions that can be customized as needed.

What are the key factors to consider when estimating the resources required for platform engineering?

Key factors include the size and duration of the platform engineering team, the budget for cloud infrastructure and operational costs, and the need for collaboration and resource allocation from other teams within the organization.