There’s no value in your platform!

Written by Paul Brown, Adam Clark, Ed Seymour, and Jonny Williams

Does your platform deliver value? This is the most important question that any platform team should be considering on a daily basis. Countless organisations have retained a traditional approach to platform creation, but our experience of working across a broad range of enterprise organisations indicates that there are ways to increase value delivery.

In the current business climate there is immense pressure on organisations to “do more with less". This pressure translates to increased demands on both technology platforms, which are becoming fundamental to the success of an organisation, and the platform engineering teams responsible for managing them.

With growing organisational demands platform engineering teams must now focus on cost optimisation while ensuring alignment with evolving business objectives and user expectations. Simply applying the engineering principles and practices that have typically been used to deliver infrastructure platforms will not suffice; this problem cannot be solved with a pure technology driven approach.

Unfortunately, many organisations find themselves doing “less with less” when they focus too closely on technology, or attempt to reduce cost, time, or people, etc while expecting greater impact without addressing key strategic and operational changes.

To succeed, platform engineering teams need an approach to mitigate the risk of building functionality with questionable business value, making suboptimal technical choices, and over-engineering solutions only to find that they remain on the shelf.

This presents a crucial challenge for platform engineering teams, and it's a challenge that technology alone cannot solve. To successfully address these demands requires a more holistic approach, including rethinking team structures, ways of working, and how new platform functionality is evaluated, prioritised and realised in order to minimise risk and maximise value, especially as value is a relative concept that requires the context of an organisation to fully define.

So, how can organisations continuously ensure their technology platforms deliver and maintain value and stay aligned with the goals and needs of the organisation.

The tl;dr answer would be to adopt a product mindset when designing, building, and evolving your platform. Essentially adopt a way of thinking and working that prioritises creating platform functionality that delivers real value to users, while also aligning with the business goals of the organisation.

But, what does this mean in practice? It sounds simple enough, but how do you start to adopt a product mindset? What's the recipe for seeding a product approach into the design, build, and evolution of a platform?

To help address these questions, we’ve started to sketch out an approach for a way of working that aims to explain how to deliver incremental platform improvements in smaller, more manageable pieces while keeping a user centric focus (applying a product mindset).

Sharing is caring

Over the past decade, we’ve worked with numerous customer and partner platform engineering and application development teams, guiding them through defining, building, and implementing application platforms within their organisations. This journey has exposed us to a wealth of platform-related challenges and successes.

Inspired by a multitude of thought leaders, including Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Team Topologies) 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 of Team Topologies, Marty Cagan of Silicon Valley Product Group, and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Platform Maturity initiative chaired by Abby Bangser, Josh Gavant, and Roberth Strand, we strongly believe in the power of sharing. That's why we're excited to contribute to the ongoing conversations and thinking around the recent rise in popularity of platform engineering and platform as a product.

We see a significant contrast between traditional delivery that countless organisations are still attempting to apply to platform creation, and the product operating model that we are increasingly seeing across successful platform teams in organisations including global banks, energy providers, vehicle manufacturers, and government institutions.

We are passionate about attempting to address the divide between these approaches and believe that this divide can be described as a set of anti-patterns and patterns, inspired by the approach of Jonathan Smart in Sooner, Safer, Happier.

While the thinking behind this content continues to evolve (just as any other product would change and grow over time) we believe this iteration has value and is worthy of feedback, and we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback to help us refine our approach further.

We believe that it is essential to drink your own champagne as a platform team (or eat your own dog food if you’re so inclined) and that is why open feedback loops are essential, and why that concept is being applied to this work.

In order to make this content as digestible as possible, we have structured our observations and ideas into patterns that we are seeing in successful organisations applying product thinking to platforms.

So, where do we start? What is the first pattern that is underpinning consistent success for platform teams?

Pattern 1: Teams are the vehicle for value delivery

Many organisations attempt to deliver value through a structure of projects, programmes, working groups, and other temporary endeavours. These efforts frequently struggle to generate a shared understanding, or move slowly due to the burden of decision making being placed upon a broad group of stakeholders. 

A time-bound project places pressure on the team to foresee and anticipate the full scope of the potential platform for its intended full life. The result is delays, indecision, and over-engineered services that prioritise supposed completeness, over early operational effectiveness and value realisation.

A pattern that we see occurring in consistently successful organisations is the formation of dedicated, long-lived platform teams. These teams embody several common key traits and are supported by leadership teams in the organisation to nurture their approach. The adoption and application of these traits is often solidified by ongoing successes that the platform team demonstrates.

Key traits for Platform Teams

The key traits we see platform teams applying in order to effectively deliver value and ensure their technology platforms remain aligned with evolving organisational needs . These traits are aligned with the team’s core principles and influence their mindset, processes, and decision-making. By cultivating these traits, platform teams can foster a product-centric approach and drive continuous improvement.

Empowered

Platform teams should be empowered to take ownership of the platform and its distinct brand. This sense of ownership fosters accountability and a vested interest in the platform's success. Empowered teams have the autonomy to make decisions, prioritise initiatives, and drive the platform's strategic direction.

Empowerment also means equipping teams with the necessary resources, tools, and support to execute their vision. This includes access to funding, training opportunities, and the freedom to experiment and innovate. By trusting and enabling platform teams, organisations cultivate a sense of pride and responsibility, ultimately leading to better alignment between the platform and business objectives.

Empowerment doesn’t mean that the team is cut loose from the rest of the organisation to act as an isolated business unit. Dependencies will still exist for the platform team, and there is a necessary leadership role within the organisation to mitigate these dependencies strategically, or balance strategic concerns. Empowerment may also involve equipping the team with necessary skills and disciplines to navigate organisational complexity themselves.

User-Centric

Platform teams must adopt a user-centric mindset, recognising that their efforts are ultimately aimed at serving the needs of their users. This approach ensures that platform development and evolution are driven by a deep understanding of user requirements, pain points, and desired outcomes.

Embracing a user-centric approach involves actively seeking user feedback, conducting usability studies, and involving users throughout the development process. This collaborative approach not only ensures that the platform meets user expectations but also fosters a sense of ownership and buy-in from the user community.

While a user-centric approach is crucial, it shouldn't come at the expense of platform needs. Platform teams often identify vital requirements that may not be immediately apparent to users. Sometimes users don't know what they don't know, so it's worth taking certain small experiments "to market" in order to validate necessity. The key is finding the middle ground and striking a balance.

Nonetheless, by putting users at the centre of their decision-making, platform teams can prioritise features and functionality that deliver tangible value, leading to increased user satisfaction and adoption. 

It’s important to note that user needs are frequently more than simply platform features and services; identifying and determining how users will develop their own skills and competencies, making best use of platform capabilities, and ultimately realising the value from the platform, is also a critical step in becoming user-centric. 

Iterative

Platform teams should embrace an iterative approach to funding and evaluating platform capabilities. Rather than committing extensive resources upfront, teams should seek incremental funding and continuously evaluate the value and impact of their efforts.

This iterative approach allows for course correction and adaptation based on real-world feedback and changing business needs. It reduces the risk of over-investing in features or functionalities that may not resonate with users or align with organisational goals.

Regular evaluations and retrospectives enable teams to identify areas for improvement, celebrate successes, and make data-informed decisions about future investments. By continuously assessing the platform's value proposition, teams can ensure that resources are allocated effectively and that the platform remains relevant and valuable.

Data-Informed

Platform teams should cultivate a data-informed culture, basing their decisions on measurable insights and metrics. This approach involves actively collecting and analysing data related to platform usage, performance, and user behaviour.

By leveraging data analytics tools and techniques, teams can gain a comprehensive understanding of how the platform is being utilised, identify bottlenecks or areas of friction, and uncover opportunities for optimisation and improvement.

Data-informed decision making also helps teams prioritise initiatives based on quantifiable impact and potential value. Rather than relying solely on assumptions or anecdotal evidence, teams can make informed choices backed by empirical data, leading to more effective and impactful platform enhancements.

Aligned

While maintaining a user-centric focus, platform teams must also ensure their efforts align with the broader organisational goals and strategic objectives. This alignment is crucial for maximising the platform's value and ensuring it contributes to the overall success of the organisation.

Platform teams should actively collaborate with stakeholders, business units, and leadership to understand the organisation's priorities, challenges, and long-term vision. By aligning their roadmap and initiatives with these overarching goals, teams can ensure that the platform supports and enables the achievement of organisational objectives.

Furthermore, by demonstrating the platform's tangible impact on objectives and key results (OKRs) and business outcomes, teams can reinforce the platform's strategic importance and secure continued investment and support.

By cultivating these key traits, platform teams can effectively navigate the complexities of delivering and maintaining valuable technology platforms. Empowerment, user-centricity, iterative evaluation, data-informed decision making, and organisational alignment work in harmony to create a product-centric mindset that drives continuous optimisation and ensures platforms remain valuable assets for the organisation. The platform can move beyond being a cost centre that struggles to validate return on investment.

Translating the key traits into something tangible

To embody the key traits of successful platform teams, organisations commonly adopt a set of enabling practices and tools. These practices and tools serve as the foundation for fostering empowerment, user-centricity, iterative approaches, data-informed decision-making, and organisational alignment. By implementing these practices and leveraging the right tools, platform teams can effectively translate their guiding principles into action.

Empowered

Empowering platform teams begins with establishing a clear Team Charter that outlines the team's purpose, responsibilities, and decision-making authority. This charter serves as a reference point, reinforcing the team's ownership and autonomy over the platform.

Complementing the Team Charter, a Skills Matrix helps identify and cultivate the necessary skills within the team. By mapping individual strengths and areas for growth, teams can proactively address skill gaps and invest in professional development, ensuring they have the capabilities to drive the platform forward.

To facilitate cross-team collaboration and enable seamless integration, platform teams should implement a Team API, which defines the team's interfaces, protocols, and interaction patterns. The Team API promotes transparency and enables other teams to effectively consume and contribute to the platform's capabilities. This is also a vital tool in mitigating and managing dependencies between teams.

Embracing Product Management practices empowers platform teams to think and operate like product teams. This includes maintaining a product backlog, conducting user research, and employing agile approaches to iteratively deliver value to users. The team might not have “a” Product Manager, but they should have people applying the discipline of Product Management.

One area we frequently see platform teams becoming unstuck is in relation to dependencies and team ways of working. Ensuring the team is equipped with skills related to Delivery Management that incorporates three aspects of enablement (coaching, facilitation, impediment removal) or similar disciplines focussed on value delivery enablement, can support team empowerment.

User-Centric

At the heart of a user-centric approach lies the Product Backlog, which serves as a prioritised list of capabilities, enhancements, and user stories, all of which meet user needs. By actively engaging users and stakeholders in backlog prioritisation, platform teams can ensure they are addressing the most pressing user needs and pain points. Backlog transparency further supports this engagement, and supports understanding around the prioritisation of capabilities.

To further amplify user voices, teams can leverage Backlog Voting mechanisms, allowing users to directly influence the priority of backlog items. This democratic approach fosters a sense of ownership and buy-in from the user community, ensuring that the platform's evolution aligns with their evolving needs. This can inform the future adoption of InnerSource approaches; using Open Source contribution principles on internal products, where people can make additions to source code regardless of team.

Regular Product Reviews provide a structured forum for platform teams to showcase their work, gather user feedback, and validate their assumptions. These reviews enable teams to course-correct and adapt based on real-world user experiences and insights. Successful teams do not use reviews as a chance to “demo” capability, but instead use it as an opportunity to see their customers using the platform and invite questions and feedback to drive improvements.

Complementing product reviews, User Experience (UX) and User Research (UR) practices help teams deeply understand user behaviours, motivations, and pain points. By employing techniques such as usability testing, user interviews, and journey mapping, teams can design platform features and interfaces that resonate with users and deliver exceptional experiences.

Successful platforms are not simply presented to users fait accompli (as the finished article), the user community needs to be trained and supported with each new platform change. Not only does this present opportunities for enabling capabilities to emerge from the platform team, for example a time bound enabling team comes into existence to support new users, it also opens the door for product-led approaches where the platform should support its own consumption without the need for human interventions.

Iterative

Adopting an iterative approach requires platform teams to secure incremental funding for their initiatives. Rather than seeking large, upfront investments, teams should pitch for smaller, manageable funding tranches, enabling them to deliver value incrementally and adapt based on feedback and evolving needs.

Team Boards provide a visual representation of the team's workflow, enabling transparency and facilitating collaboration. By visualising work in progress, dependencies, and blockers, teams can identify bottlenecks, optimise their processes, and prioritise effectively.

Regular Retrospectives encourage teams to reflect on their practices, successes, and challenges. These retrospectives foster a culture of continuous improvement, allowing teams to identify areas for optimisation, celebrate wins, and adapt their approaches as needed.

Defining a clear Definition of Done (DoD) ensures that platform features and enhancements meet agreed-upon quality standards and acceptance criteria before being released to users. This DoD serves as a checkpoint, ensuring that teams deliver value consistently and maintain high standards throughout the iterative development process.

Data-Informed

To enable data-informed decision-making, platform teams should leverage User Surveys to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback directly from their user base. These surveys provide insights into user satisfaction, pain points, and desired features, allowing teams to make data-informed decisions about platform enhancements and prioritisation.

Feature Monitoring tools and practices enable teams to track the usage, performance, and impact of platform features in real-time. By monitoring key metrics and indicators, teams can identify underutilised or problematic features, optimise resource allocation, and make informed decisions about feature retirement or enhancement.

Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs) provide a structured approach to defining and measuring the platform's performance and reliability. By establishing clear targets and monitoring these SLOs/SLIs, teams can proactively address issues, optimise platform performance, and ensure they are meeting user expectations and organisational standards.

Aligned

Maintaining alignment with organisational goals begins with crafting a Product Roadmap that outlines the platform's strategic direction and planned initiatives. This roadmap should be informed by the organisation's vision, objectives, and priorities, ensuring that the platform's evolution supports and enables broader business goals.

Complementing the roadmap, a clearly articulated Product Vision helps align stakeholders and users around a shared understanding of the platform's purpose, value proposition, and long-term aspirations. This vision serves as a guiding star, informing decision-making and ensuring that platform enhancements remain aligned with the overall strategic direction.

Cadenced Planning sessions facilitate regular alignment and collaboration between platform teams, stakeholders, and other organisational units. These sessions provide opportunities to review progress, discuss challenges, and ensure that the platform's initiatives remain synchronised with evolving business needs and priorities.

By embracing these enabling practices and tools, platform teams can effectively operationalise the key traits of empowerment, user-centricity, iterative approaches, data-informed decision-making, and organisational alignment. These practices and tools provide a structured framework for platform teams to deliver value, foster collaboration, and continuously optimise their platforms to meet the ever-changing demands of the organisation and its users.

Pattern 2: Platforms need a product strategy

The Continuous Improvement Cycle

Successful platforms are not static entities; they require a continuous cycle of improvement and optimisation to maintain their relevance and value. To achieve this, we see successful platform teams adopting a product strategy that embraces the concept of continuous optimisation, which is driven by three interconnected phases: funding, evaluation, and realisation. Evaluation and realisation form a recurring loop that breaks out into a cyclical funding loop supported by evidence and outcomes.

These loops are not divided into discovery and delivery as is often found in other approaches due to the fact that we see successful platform teams incorporating the discovery of new information and the delivery of value into all aspects of platform creation. Evaluation should generate valuable artefacts that inform decision making, and platform realisation should incorporate ongoing discovery activities to assess whether things are being created in the right way. 

Successful platform teams in large organisations view the entire process of platform creation as delivery because no activity should be undertaken unless it creates value in some form, including the delivery of key decision points that enable viability conversations to take place.

Funding

Whilst we don't think that we should be in the business of defining funding models, we’ve included this section to recognise that a more optimal funding approach exists, and that it is a dependency for all of the platform teams we collaborate with. Funding is the (treacherous) foundation of these outlined patterns and provides important business context that will inform platform decision making. Most platform teams will have to work with the funding model that exists today (for now, bring your own funding model), but should strive to influence it for the future.

The funding phase is the starting point of the continuous improvement cycle. It involves securing the necessary resources and investments to explore, develop, and enhance platform capabilities. However, unlike traditional funding models that rely on large, upfront investments, a product-centric approach advocates for incremental and iterative funding.

Incremental funding allows platform teams to tackle initiatives in manageable chunks, reducing the risk of over-committing resources to features or enhancements that may not resonate with users or align with organisational objectives. This approach encourages teams to start small, validate their assumptions, and progressively build upon success.

Effective funding strategies may include pitching for discrete funding tranches, leveraging internal innovation funds, or collaborating with stakeholders to secure dedicated budgets for platform initiatives. 

In mature organisations we have seen platforms being funded as startups where initial seed funding is secured, aiming to develop the platform into a self-sustaining profit centre where platform consumers fund operation and further investment through usage fees or chargeback. 

Regardless of the approach, the goal of any funding model is to secure the necessary resources to explore new ideas and continuously improve the platform without incurring excessive risk or waste.

Evaluation

The evaluation phase is where platform teams assess the value proposition, user needs, and feasibility of proposed platform enhancements or features. This phase is critical to ensuring that the team's efforts are aligned with user expectations and organisational goals, and that the proposed solutions are viable and likely to deliver the desired outcomes. 

During the evaluation phase, platform teams should actively engage with users and stakeholders to gather feedback, conduct user research, and analyse data to inform their decision-making. This may involve techniques such as user surveys, usability testing, data analytics, and value stream mapping.

By thoroughly evaluating proposed enhancements, teams can prioritise initiatives based on their potential impact, identify areas of high friction or user pain points, test assumptions and make informed decisions about the most effective solutions. This evaluation process helps to mitigate the risk of building functionality with questionable business value or over-engineering solutions that may not be widely adopted.

Realisation

Once a proposed platform enhancement has undergone rigorous evaluation and secured the necessary funding, the realisation phase begins. During this phase, platform teams focus on iteratively developing, testing, and deploying the desired functionality or capability.

Embracing an iterative development approach, such as agile methodologies or lean product development, allows teams to break down complex initiatives into smaller, manageable increments. This iterative approach enables teams to gather feedback, validate assumptions, and make course corrections throughout the development process, reducing the risk of delivering solutions that miss the mark.

Throughout the initial realisation phase, platform teams should maintain a strong focus on delivering the minimum viable platform (MVP) and/or the thinnest viable platform (TVP) that fulfils core user needs. This lean approach helps to avoid over-engineering or bloating the platform with unnecessary functionality, reducing complexity and technical debt. The thinnest viable platform is an evolutionary concept aligned with the idea of keeping the platform lightweight.

Continuous integration, automated testing, and robust deployment pipelines are essential practices that support the iterative realisation of platform enhancements. These practices enable teams to rapidly build, test, and deploy incremental changes, facilitating a faster feedback loop and enabling more frequent value delivery to users.

As platform features are released and adopted, platform teams should actively monitor their usage, performance, and impact. This data-informed approach provides valuable insights that can inform future iterations, optimisations, or even the retirement of underutilised or redundant features.

The continuous improvement cycle of funding, evaluation, and realisation is a perpetual loop that drives the ongoing evolution and optimisation of technology platforms. By embracing this cycle, platform teams can ensure that their platforms remain valuable, relevant, and aligned with the ever-changing needs of users and the organisation.

Moreover, this cycle reinforces the importance of adopting a product mindset, where platform teams prioritise delivering tangible value to users, make data-informed decisions, and continuously iterate and refine their offerings based on feedback and market dynamics.

The Open Platform Adoption Framework

To effectively apply the continuous improvement cycle of funding, evaluation, and realisation, platform teams often benefit from the application of a structured approach that guides them through the various stages of platform enhancement and optimisation. 

The Open Platform Adoption Framework (OPAF) aims to provide a repeatable methodology that captures the key steps and considerations for successfully delivering and adopting new platform capabilities. This framework exists as an evolving artefact that incorporates the delivery approaches we have seen in use with successful platform teams.

It's important to note that this is a cyclical process. There is no “mission accomplished”, instead there is a continued drive towards optimising and developing the platform solution, ensuring it maintains relevance and focus on business and user needs. 

Whilst the process looks linear in this representation, it is in fact simply representing how the team first evaluates then implements new capabilities, before starting to focus on what's next.

Getting Started: Soliciting ideas and feedback

The first step in the framework is to encourage the contribution of new ideas and feedback from across the organisation. This open-door approach fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration, ensuring that platform teams can tap into diverse perspectives and identify potential areas for improvement or new functionality.

Value Assessment: Prioritising and organising ideas

Once ideas and feedback have been gathered, platform teams must prioritise and organise them based on their potential value contribution. This value assessment process involves aligning proposed ideas with the platform's identified value streams, which represent the different ways the platform delivers value to the organisation.

Solution Alignment: Sketching potential solutions for high-priority ideas

At this stage, teams should resist the temptation to dive into detailed designs or implementations. Instead, the focus should be on exploring various approaches and aligning them with the identified user needs and value propositions.

Viability Agreement: Evaluating cost, ROI, and optimisation

Before committing significant resources, platform teams must evaluate the viability of the proposed solutions. This step involves assessing the total cost of ownership, potential return on investment, and opportunities for optimisation. Only solutions that demonstrate a compelling value proposition and align with organisational goals should proceed to the next stage.

Capability Development: Iterative cycles (Alpha, Beta, Live)

Once a solution has been deemed viable, platform teams can begin the iterative development process. This stage follows a well-defined lifecycle, starting with an alpha release for demonstration purposes, progressing to a beta release for real-world testing and feedback, and culminating in a live release for general availability.

Throughout the development process, teams should embrace an iterative approach, continuously gathering feedback, and refining the solution based on user input and real-world usage data. This iterative cycle ensures that the final product closely aligns with user needs and delivers maximum value.

Value Realisation: Measuring and Marketing the Platform

As the platform feature or enhancement is adopted and utilised, platform teams must actively measure and showcase the value it delivers. This involves tracking progress towards objectives and key results (OKRs), gathering user feedback, and quantifying the impact on organisational objectives.

Deeply understanding the value of the platform is arguably one of the simplest yet most impactful things that we see successful platform teams doing in all types of organisations. This information ensures that teams can advocate for themselves and demonstrate exactly why they are deserving of ongoing investment and support. This information is often the foundation of buy-in from management teams.

Additionally, platform teams should proactively market and promote the new capabilities to ensure widespread awareness and adoption. This marketing effort can take various forms, such as internal communications, training sessions, or showcasing success stories and use cases. Considering a launch approach for new capabilities is essential.

The Open Platform Adoption Framework provides a structured and repeatable approach for platform teams to navigate the continuous improvement cycle. By following this framework, teams can effectively solicit ideas, prioritise initiatives based on value, explore viable solutions, develop and refine features iteratively, and ultimately realise and promote the platform's value to the organisation.

This framework reinforces the product mindset by placing a strong emphasis on user needs, value assessment, and continuous feedback loops. It ensures that platform teams remain focused on delivering tangible value while aligning their efforts with organisational goals and objectives.

Pattern 3: Team interactions underpin platform maturity

As technology platforms evolve and mature, the team interactions and collaboration patterns must adapt to accommodate the changing needs and complexities of the platform. The progression from collaboration to facilitation and ultimately to a service-oriented model is a natural path that enables platform teams to effectively manage risk, gather feedback, and gradually shift expectations while maintaining a focus on delivering value to users. This aligns with the Platform Maturity Model published by the CNCF and the concepts described in Team Topologies.

An anti-pattern we frequently encounter is platform teams operating in a way that disconnects technology capabilities from team capabilities. Platform teams working in this way define features and capabilities without input from users and roll-out these new capabilities to all users at the same time creating an influx of operational overhead as overwhelming volumes of feedback and incidents occur simultaneously. This indicates a disconnect between the work of a platform team and one key purpose of Platform Engineering; to improve Developer Experience.

Operational overhead traps platform teams in a domain where tasks are manual, and often ticket driven, creating further toil and leaving platform users craving a self-service solution which often guides them towards shadow IT, where the bar is set by cloud providers that empower customers to self-serve.

The build trap of creating features that do not drive outcomes, and being trapped in a domain of high manual overhead (traditional IT operations, drowning in tickets) can be understood through platform metrics such as those described by the authors of Accelerate and the DevEx white paper. These metrics help teams and organisations to understand the full impact a platform team can have upon users.

Collaboration: Working together

In the early stages of platform development or when introducing new capabilities, collaboration becomes the primary mode of interaction. Collaboration involves platform teams working closely with other teams, stakeholders, and subject matter experts to explore new ideas, technologies, or practices.

During this collaborative phase, platform teams can leverage the diverse expertise and perspectives of their partners to uncover valuable insights, identify potential pitfalls, and validate assumptions. This collaborative approach fosters a shared understanding and buy-in, reducing the risk of developing features or capabilities that fail to resonate with users or align with organisational objectives.

Collaboration also enables platform teams to contain the blast radius of experimentation. By working closely with a limited set of teams or users, platform teams can gather feedback quickly, iterate rapidly, and make course corrections before committing significant resources or exposing a broader audience to unrefined or unproven capabilities.

Facilitation: Supporting and enabling other teams

As platform capabilities mature and gain traction, the interaction model shifts towards facilitation. In this mode, the platform team takes on a mentoring and advisory role, helping other teams understand, adopt, and effectively utilise the platform's offerings.

Facilitation involves providing guidance, training, and support to ensure that consuming teams have the knowledge and skills necessary to leverage the platform's capabilities effectively. This approach not only accelerates adoption but also fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment among the consuming teams, enabling them to become self-sufficient in their use of the platform.

During the facilitation phase, platform teams can continue to gather feedback and refine their offerings based on real-world usage patterns and insights from the consuming teams. This feedback loop helps to identify areas for improvement, address edge cases, and ensure that the platform remains relevant and valuable to its users.

X-as-a-Service: Providing and consuming services

As platform capabilities reach a level of maturity and stability, the interaction model can evolve into an "X-as-a-Service" approach. In this model, the platform team provides well-defined, self-service interfaces and APIs that enable other teams to consume platform capabilities seamlessly and efficiently.

The "X-as-a-Service" approach is analogous to the principles of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products, where platform teams strive to provide reliable, resilient, and secure services that meet the evolving needs of their users. This approach minimises the operational overhead for consuming teams, allowing them to focus on their core responsibilities while benefiting from the platform's capabilities.

By embracing an "X-as-a-Service" model, platform teams can automate many aspects of the platform's operations, reducing the cognitive load and manual effort required to maintain and support the platform. This automation not only improves efficiency but also enhances the platform's scalability and consistency, ensuring that users receive a high-quality, reliable experience regardless of the volume or complexity of their interactions.

Moreover, the "X-as-a-Service" approach aligns with the product mindset by treating the platform as a product in its own right. Platform teams can leverage product management practices, such as defining service level agreements (SLAs), monitoring progress towards objectives and key results (OKRs), and continuously iterating and improving their offerings based on user feedback and evolving needs.

The progression from collaboration to facilitation and ultimately to an "X-as-a-Service" model is a natural evolution that supports the maturing needs of technology platforms. This progression not only manages risk and gathers feedback effectively but also gradually shifts expectations and responsibilities, enabling platform teams to focus on delivering reliable, valuable services while maintaining the capacity to explore and develop new capabilities.

By embracing this iterative approach to team interactions, platform teams can strike a balance between innovation and operational excellence. They can foster a culture of collaboration and exploration while simultaneously ensuring that their platform remains resilient, secure, and aligned with the evolving needs of the organisation and its users.

Pattern 4: Blow your own trumpet

While adopting a product mindset and delivering value are crucial for platform teams, it's equally important to celebrate successes and showcase the platform's impact. By defining clear success metrics, proactively showcasing the platform's value, and enabling a culture of continuous improvement, we consistently see successful platform teams reinforcing the strategic importance of their efforts and securing ongoing support and investment.

The value of these activities never diminishes as even the most successful platform teams that we have partnered with often become a victim of organisational inertia where their value as a team is gradually taken for granted and the mandate of “do more with less” takes hold. In these circumstances there is still hope for platform teams, but they need to be increasingly proactive in creating clarity around value and ROI for the platform. Assuming people see value in the platform is a risk that is never worth taking.

Defining Success Metrics

Success metrics are quantifiable measures that demonstrate the platform's effectiveness and impact on organisational objectives. Defining these metrics is a critical first step in establishing a framework for measuring, tracking, and communicating the platform's value.

Effective success metrics should align with the platform's identified value streams and the organisation's strategic goals. For example, if the platform is designed to streamline application onboarding processes, relevant success metrics might include:

• Reduction in average onboarding time

• Increase in developer productivity

• Improvement in application compliance rates

By establishing clear success metrics upfront, platform teams can set realistic targets, measure progress, and make data-informed decisions about where to focus their efforts.

Showcasing the platform's impact

Once success metrics are defined and tracked, platform teams should proactively showcase the platform's impact through various communication channels. This not only builds awareness and advocacy but also reinforces the platform's strategic value and contribution to organisational objectives.

Effective communication strategies may include:

• Internal Success Stories and Case Studies: Highlighting real-world examples of how the platform has enabled teams or projects to achieve their goals, overcome challenges, or drive measurable improvements.

• Platform Dashboards and Reporting: Providing stakeholders with regular updates and dashboards that showcase the platform's performance against defined success metrics, highlighting key achievements and areas for improvement.

• Executive Briefings and Presentations: Engaging with leadership and executive teams to share the platform's vision, roadmap, and demonstrable impact on organisational priorities and objectives.

• Cross-Team Knowledge Sharing: Facilitating knowledge sharing sessions, workshops, or brown bag sessions to educate other teams on the platform's capabilities, best practices, and success stories.

By actively communicating the platform's impact and value, teams not only foster a sense of transparency and trust but also cultivate a culture of appreciation and support for the platform's ongoing evolution and optimisation.

Continuous improvement and optimisation

While celebrating successes and showcasing impact are important, platform teams must also embrace a mindset of continuous improvement and optimisation. This mindset recognises that platforms are dynamic entities that must continuously evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of users and the organisation.

Continuous improvement and optimisation involve:

• Regularly Reviewing Success Metrics: Periodically re-evaluating the relevance and effectiveness of defined success metrics, ensuring they remain aligned with evolving organisational priorities and user needs.

• Soliciting User Feedback: Actively seeking feedback from users through surveys, focus groups, or direct communication channels to identify areas for improvement, pain points, or new feature requests.

• Analysing Platform Usage and Performance Data: Leveraging platform monitoring and analytics tools to gain insights into usage patterns, performance bottlenecks, and areas where optimisation or enhancements could drive greater value.

• Enabling a Culture of Innovation: Encouraging team members to explore new technologies, techniques, or approaches that could enhance the platform's capabilities, efficiency, or user experience.

• Continuous Learning and Professional Development: Investing in ongoing training and professional development opportunities to ensure the team's skills and knowledge remain up-to-date and aligned with industry best practices.

By supporting a culture of continuous improvement and optimisation, platform teams can ensure that their efforts remain relevant, valuable, and responsive to the dynamic needs of the organisation and its users.

Blowing your own trumpet is not about self-promotion or arrogance; it's about recognising and communicating the value that platform teams deliver. By defining success metrics, showcasing the platform's impact, and embracing continuous improvement, platform teams can reinforce their strategic importance, secure ongoing support and investment, and ultimately drive greater value for the organisation and its users.

This approach not only aligns with the product mindset but also fosters a sense of pride, ownership, and accountability within the platform team. When team members can clearly see the tangible impact of their efforts and contributions, they become more motivated, engaged, and committed to the platform's ongoing success.

Ultimately, blowing your own trumpet is a critical aspect of ensuring that technology platforms remain valuable, relevant, and aligned with the evolving needs of the organisation and its users.

Conclusion: Embracing a Product Mindset for Valuable Platforms

Platforms have become the operational backbone for many organisations. However, with growing demands for cost optimisation and alignment with business objectives and user expectations, platform engineering teams face an enormous challenge. Simply applying traditional engineering practices is no longer sufficient; a more holistic approach is required to ensure platforms remain valuable and aligned with organisational goals.

Throughout the work we do with platforms teams and the evolution of these patterns, we have emphasised the importance of adopting a product mindset when designing, building, and evolving technology platforms. This mindset prioritises the creation of platform functionality that delivers real value to users while aligning with the organisation's business goals. 

By embracing a product-centric approach, platform teams can mitigate the risks of building functionality with questionable business value, making suboptimal technical choices, and over-engineering solutions that ultimately remain on the shelf.

Adopting a product mindset for technology platforms is not a theoretical concept; it is a practical and actionable approach that can unlock significant value for organisations. In fact Thoughtworks have been recommending this approach since mid-2020 after trialling it in 2017.

As platform engineering teams navigate the complexities of delivering and maintaining platforms, it is crucial to embrace this mindset and the principles outlined in the patterns we have described.

We encourage platform teams to reflect on their current practices, identify areas for improvement, and actively work towards embodying the key traits and enabling practices discussed. Cultivate a culture of empowerment, user-centricity, data-informed decision making, and alignment with organisational goals. Implement tools and frameworks that support iterative funding, evaluation, and realisation of platform capabilities.

Furthermore, we urge platform teams to take ownership of showcasing their impact and value. Define clear success metrics, leverage effective communication strategies, and proactively communicate the platform's contributions to organisational objectives. Celebrate successes, but also embrace a mindset of continuous improvement, fostering a culture of innovation and ongoing professional development. The work is never done.

By adopting a product mindset, platform teams can unlock their full potential, moving beyond their traditional role of a cost centre and becoming a strategic asset that enables innovation, effectiveness, and growth for the organisation.

Just as the work for platform teams is never truly done, our work is never done either, as we continue to drink our own champagne. The ideas and patterns shared in this work represent a snapshot of our current understanding and observations, but they are by no means exhaustive or set in stone.

We recognise that every organisation is unique, with its own challenges, culture, and operating environment. The true value of these concepts lies in their ability to spark dialogue, inspire experimentation, and foster a growth mindset within platform teams and the organisations they serve.

As we continue to refine and evolve our approach, we invite feedback, insights, and real-world experiences from the community. Share your successes, challenges, and lessons learned in applying a product mindset to your technology platforms. Challenge our assumptions, and contribute your unique perspectives.

In closing, we encourage platform teams to embrace the product mindset wholeheartedly. Adopt the principles, implement the practices, and continuously iterate and improve. Celebrate your successes, learn from your challenges, and never lose sight of the ultimate goal: delivering value.