Platform Engineering at Viva Engage

The complexity of managing platform engineering teams is unlike any other.
These teams are often the backbone, enabling multiple feature teams to produce their best work.
How can platform teams scale this capability efficiently? How can they be effective while constantly juggling multiple priorities, ensuring you are not becoming a bottleneck and still making space for continuous improvement?

In this deck, I shared stories from our platform team journey, what worked and what didn't, and the valuable insights gained while scaling our ability to enable multiple feature teams.
Also included strategies to achieve quicker turnarounds, how to circumvent becoming the roadblock, mitigate the scattering of platform engineers, and harness the power of systematic office hours, principle-based guidance, and a self-sustaining knowledge hub.

Transcript

1. Platform Engineering at Viva Engage (Yammer) Diego Quiroga Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft Stage C Ask questions using Slido November 7-8, 2023 - San Francisco
2. diego.quiroga@gmail.com @diegoquiroga linkedin.com/in/diego Diego Quiroga Cut my programming teeth on a TK90X (ZX Spectrum clone) 20+ years building things that talk HTTP(s) Platform Engineering at Viva Engage (Yammer) in Microsoft Based in Vancouver, Canada Previously: AWS, OLX, Google
3. What defines a Platform Team? What they do
4. Platform teams provide knowledge, support, and the building blocks that feature teams use to ship business-facing functionality at a faster pace
5. The mission of the platform team, should you choose to accept it, is enabling product teams to get things done
6. Product Team Infra Product Team Product Team DevExp Product Team Core X The mission of platform teams is enabling product teams to get things done
7. Platform Teams • Must anticipate engineering needs • Multitask between projects & support • Work for engineering teams • Hold a less tangible value proposition • Have a larger blast radius in decisions • Satisfy customer needs • Deliver under time/capacity constraints • Need to address tech debt • Deal with conflicting priorities • Must collaborate cross-team Feature Teams
8. Abstracting one level up and thinking of Interactions and Collaboration Models
9. Platform P F Self-service *x-as-a-service P F Dependencies *collaboration Ask Capability * ’Team Topologies’ equivalent sync async Ability to Scale Assistance P F Request Request Service provider *consulting
10. The Beat of a Very Busy Team
11. Contributing to new customer-facing features Supporting a heavy workload on-call In high demand for assistance and code reviews Attending ad-hoc consultations, often last-minute Finding a path forward.. Improving performance and reliability
12. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular and structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team What we did
13. ˜430 answered in Qx 70% < 3 days Hacking Week!
14. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular and structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team What we did
16. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular and structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team 4. Created paved paths with templates, and How-To guides What we did
18. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular and structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team 4. Created paved paths with templates, and How-To guides 5. Used playbooks and coached the platform team What we did
19. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular, structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team 4. Created paved paths with templates, and How-To guides 5. Used playbooks and coached the platform team 6. Invested in troubleshooting tools to offload work What we did
21. Reusability Sustainability
22. 1. Tracked inbound requests, leveraged analytics 2. Formalized regular, structured Office Hours 3. Promoted best ways to engage with the platform team 4. Created paved paths with templates, and How-To guides 5. Used playbooks and coached the platform team 6. Invested in troubleshooting tools to offload work 7. Moved from one-off dependencies to reusable capabilities What we did
23. Our Team Today
24. Simplification: reducing changes required for new features Offloading non-critical tasks: running a Champions program Feature teams owning their QoS: training teams on reliability Increased visibility: for platform work impact and future plans What keeps us busy
25. Wrapping up: The Challenge of Capacity
26. • Practices, tools, and culture define platform teams • Reduce toil, document, and promote self-service • View requests as opportunities to empower others • Showcase impact through compelling stories • Always be creating more Capacity 5 things to remember
27. Thanks for listening! Questions? Continue conversation in Roundtable 7 at 3pm Stage C Ask questions using Slido