How Platform Engineering Affects Your Organization

A Platform Engineering VP shared some eye-opening numbers with me yesterday: VP: "I've been trying to quantify our environment costs. We have 200 developers, each making ~5 PRs a week." Me: "How long does it take to test each change?" VP: "Average wait time for a test environment is 45 minutes. Plus another hour to run tests. Sometimes up to 3 hours if there are conflicts." *does quick math* "That's about 2000 engineering hours every week just waiting for environments and test results." VP: "Exactly. At $150/hr fully loaded engineering cost, we're burning $300K every week. But duplicating environments for faster testing would cost even more in infrastructure." This is when I shared how modern service mesh architectures are changing this equation: Instead of duplicating infrastructure, you can create instant test environments by isolating at the request level using Istio/Linkerd. Each developer gets their own "slice" of the environment through smart request routing. The numbers got interesting: - Infrastructure costs: Down 90% (sharing resources vs duplicating) - Wait times: From 45 mins to 2 mins - Test completion: From hours to minutes - Time to debug issues: Cut in half The VP's response: "So we can give every developer instant environments AND reduce costs?" This is why I'm excited about modern cloud native architectures. The ROI isn't incremental - it's transformative. Real question: How are other platform teams measuring the cost of slow testing cycles? Would love to hear your metrics. #platformengineering #devops #microservices #productivity

Build It Right: Treating Your Platform as a Product Treating a platform as a product changes everything. Instead of just maintaining infrastructure, it’s about actively investing in it to empower teams, reduce friction, and accelerate development. When done right, it allows teams to integrate dependencies faster and build in a self-serve manner. But if you don’t invest, teams that rely on you will struggle to get their dependencies delivered, making it painful to ship customer-facing features. From my experience, here are some key lessons on treating a platform as a product: 1. Define the Core Value – Your platform has customers (internal teams). Understand their pain points and measure success based on how well you solve them. 2. Balance Build vs. Fix – It’s not just about new features. Maintaining and evolving existing capabilities is just as important. Ignoring this leads to technical debt that slows everyone down. 3. Enable, Don’t Block – A great platform reduces friction. Invest in clear documentation, contracts, and self-service tools so teams don’t need constant hand-holding. 4. Listen to Your Customers – Internal teams are your users. Prioritize their feedback and ensure your roadmap aligns with their real needs, not just assumptions. 5. Fix Forward – Respect what exists. Every system was built with a purpose. Instead of rewriting everything, evolve it based on today’s needs without disrupting what works. A well-invested platform doesn’t just reduce operational burden—it amplifies innovation across the organization. But if you neglect it, dependencies will become bottlenecks, and delivering value to customers will become slow and painful. Investing in your platform is investing in the success of every team that relies on it. #PlatformAsAProduct #TechLeadership #Innovation #BuildBetter #EngineeringExcellence

🚗 Many engineering organizations are like a clapped-out Corolla. There is no such thing as a 10x engineer, but there is a 10x engineering force: ops, DevOps, and platform teams. These teams are the hidden multipliers of engineering productivity. They're not writing features, but they're creating the assembly lines and support systems that enable product teams to ship faster, safer, and at scale. A well-funded and empowered DevOps-adjacent team is the key to unlocking 10x output across an organization. Yet, too often, businesses neglect these teams—either underfunding them or failing to understand their value. Why? Because their work is invisible when it’s done well. CI/CD pipelines, standardized infrastructure, automated deployments, and self-service platforms don’t scream for attention. But take them away, and the cracks in your organization become impossible to ignore. Want to see your product team’s velocity skyrocket? Invest in your ops teams. Give them the tools, time, and budget to solve the hard problems of scaling, reliability, and automation. The ROI is exponential. And if you’re not seeing this kind of multiplier effect from your DevOps or platform teams, ask yourself why. Is it because they’re buried under mountains of red tape, tech debt, and organizational bullshit? Red tape looks like endless approval processes for access, restrictive policies that make experimentation impossible, and rigid hierarchies that keep your team firefighting instead of innovating. Removing red tape means cutting down approval bottlenecks by implementing self-service infrastructure. It means replacing outdated processes with automated workflows that give teams the freedom to focus on impactful work. It’s about trusting your teams to make decisions within guardrails instead of micromanaging every move. Have they been undervalued and overlooked for so long that they’re now operating in survival mode instead of driving innovation? If you’re their manager, the hard truth is this: that’s on you. Your teams can’t thrive without the right support, trust, and resources. A DevOps team working under constant constraints isn’t a 10x enabler—it’s a 0.1x liability. The opportunity is there. Support your teams. Remove bottlenecks. Replace red tape with self-service. Give them the freedom to innovate – and the funding to innovate, and watch your engineering organization thrive. 10x doesn’t come from individual brilliance—it comes from systems brilliance. And that’s exactly what well-supported and properly funded DevOps and platform teams deliver.

I had a fascinating conversation with a community member yesterday. As we were talking about their platform and the impact they were seeing in their organization, they dropped this staggering stat: 🚀 Since launching their developer platform, their engineering team is now opening 40% more pull requests—with the same headcount and budget. And this isn’t a one-time spike. It’s been sustained over time. Think about that. 🔹 Same team. 🔹 Same budget. 🔹 40% more output. In financial terms, this translates to ~30% in salary savings since they didn’t need to hire more engineers to scale delivery. For a 200-person engineering team, that’s $5–$7M in annual savings by reducing friction and automating low-value development workflows. The takeaway? Investing in developer experience isn't just about happier engineers, it’s a direct, measurable business advantage.

Google DORA Report 2024: AI and Platform Engineering in DevOps 👉 𝟳𝟱% 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆, but 𝟰𝟬% 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗜-𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲. 👉 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘂𝗽 𝟭𝟬% with platform engineering, but 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝟭𝟰%. 👉 𝗔𝗜 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 but leads to 𝟳.𝟮% 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟭.𝟱% 𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝗽𝘂𝘁. Are we chasing productivity at the expense of quality? What every tech leader needs to know: 𝟭. 𝗔𝗜 (𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲) AI tools are becoming integral in DevOps workflows, with most developers using AI daily for tasks like code generation, documentation, and code review. For example, tools like GitHub Copilot and Tabnine help developers write code faster and reduce cognitive load. The report shows that AI boosts focus, documentation quality (+7.5%), and code review speed (+3.1%). However, increased AI usage correlates with a decrease in delivery stability (-7.2%) and a drop in throughput (-1.5%). The report even shows a 25% increase in AI adoption causing more rework and technical debt over time. Use it wisely and reinforce quality checks. Start with specific, controlled areas like documentation and code review. So don’t dive headfirst. Build trust and stability gradually. 𝟮. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗙𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗲𝗿) Platform engineering is reshaping DevOps through internal developer platforms (IDPs), which enable self-service and streamline workflows. Take Shopify’s DevEx team, which built an internal platform to help developers quickly deploy, test, and release. This kind of platform engineering has improved individual productivity (+8%) and team productivity (+10%). But as the DORA report points out, this speed comes with risks. Platform engineering led to a decrease in throughput (-8%) and stability (-14%). So build it with developer feedback to avoid instability. Treat your platform as a product, gathering feedback constantly and making incremental improvements. It’s better to evolve than to overhaul. Both AI and platform engineering hold immense potential. But they need thoughtful, strategic adoption. 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲-𝗼𝗳𝗳𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂? Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gbESZtcj #DevOps #AI #PlatformEngineering #DeveloperExperience #TechLeadership Follow me for insights on DevOps and tech innovation.

Business value vs. platform health? It’s not either-or. It’s a portfolio strategy. Over the years, I’ve seen companies take on massive multi-year re-platforming efforts. These usually succeed in launching a shiny new platform...But at what cost? 1️⃣ The business is often set back significantly during the transition. 2️⃣ The new platform rarely delivers the features the business actually needed when the effort was launched - requirements were lost in translation, subject matter experts left and knowledge lost, context was missing. 3️⃣ Worse, the team stopped learning. No customer feedback for years, no iteration, and by the time the platform is done, the market has changed. On the flip side, I’ve also seen what happens when platform health is ignored: Customer satisfaction is impacted with more disruptions and incidents. Tech debt grows while the work slows down. Less productivity from engineering and product teams. Morale dips. Velocity drops. Less experimentation. Growth stalls as competitors move faster and better. That’s why I approach this challenge like a portfolio. 📊 Most of the investment should go toward delivering business value. That should NEVER stop. 🔧 But 20–30% must be consistently allocated to platform modernization, platform health, engineering excellence, and reducing technical debt with consistent incremental delivery Neglecting that part of the portfolio doesn’t just build up future risk — it quietly erodes your ability to move fast and deliver impact. It's not a tug-of-war between tech and business. It’s about investing wisely in both — today and for the long run.

Software systems are bound to become complex over time, sometimes to the level of demanding a complete rewrite. How do good engineers think about these migrations, their cost and sometimes years-long execution? 1. Boiling frog problem: good engineers will pay attention to and prioritize fixing tech debt as shortcuts become costlier over time. Good leaders at all levels should bring visibility to their managers -- what shortcuts were or are being taken, what fast-follow cleanups need to be done, why velocity is taking a hit because of complexity, and eventually, when it’s time to commit to a complete infra rewrite. 2. Business goes on: you can’t stop building features and investing in topline goals. If you’re a platform team, you can’t ask your clients to stop running their business either. Good leaders advance their infra goals in balance with business goals. You may need new auxiliary metrics for your organization: velocity or reliability, which you can chase with infra migrations. 3. Deliver incremental impact: bring early returns, prove the value of migration and keep morale up. Whenever possible, aim to incrementally migrate pieces that would benefit the most from migration. For example, optimize for migrating pieces with a maximum value of (“complexity” x “number of upcoming projects touching the piece”).

Still a big challenge for platform teams: Measuring and communicating how their platform translates to business value. Measuring business value is an important part of any product, but many internal DevOps teams and newly-formed platform teams may not have much experience with a product-focused approach. While the first customers of the platform may be dev/engineering teams, the value of the platform doesn’t stop with these internal customers. It extends to the customers of the products the delivery teams’ products are supporting as well. That's where the value is. The business value of the platform becomes more tangible when we can show how it directly results in improved lead time, product security, and any impact to overall customer experience. To better understand their impact to the value stream, our platform teams need to become much more familiar with both the metrics associated with their product and what the teams they are supporting are measuring. Where do we start and what should we measure? Just like any mature product team, platform teams need to build capabilities into their products to enable added visibility and metrics within the larger value stream. Enabling observability within the platform will keep its function and impact visible to the larger organization and make it easier for these teams to relate their work to real world business value. Our Liatrio team starts with tracking and measuring the #dora "four keys" metrics and relate how changes to the platform affect these metrics. If you're not already tracking these metrics, you should be. https://lnkd.in/g5Z8ccCP There are many tools and services out there and you can get started with whatever you might already have in the org. Our team is heavily involved in open source projects like OpenTelemetry https://opentelemetry.io/ that has become a great solution to enable logging, metrics, and tracing for all products. It's pretty ubiquitous. Using common solutions helps us tie all of the products in the delivery value stream together. I'd love to chat more about it. What other ways are you showing the business value of your platform? #platformengineering #platforms #productthinking #observability #opentelemetry