Falling in Love with Platform Engineering: The CUPID Way

In recent years, large organizations have adopted Internal Developer Portals (IDPs) to balance governance and autonomy. Despite their promise, many platforms prioritize compliance over usability. This talk explores enhancing platform engineering through principles like product mindset, user experience, and key metrics, while questioning the optimal granularity of services in the “Golden Path.”
Inspired by Dan North’s “Joyful Software”, during this talk the concept of “Joyful Engineering” and the CUPID principles are proposed to transform service building approaches. By focusing on self-containment, idempotency and single purpose, organizations can improve service acceptance and foster collaboration.
Key takeaways include:
Understanding why IDPs aren’t a magic solution for developer experience.
Finding the balance between autonomy and governance.
Adoption of Cupid Principles (Composable, Unix Philosophy, Predictable, Idiomatic, Domain-based) to Platform Engineering.
Leveraging the “Everything as Code” mindset with Agentic AI to shape the future of developer experience.

Transcript

1. Falling in Love with Platform Engineering: The CUPID Way Makan Sepehrifar May 2025 1
3. Who am I? Makan Sepehrifar 20+ Years of Software Development Experience Principal Engineer at Code Nomads, Solution Architect at Rabobank linkedin.com/in/makan1869/ @makan1869 3 @makan1869 github.com/makan1869/
4. 2022 - Happy Developers write better code by Roy Braam 2024 – Developer Experience : From Hype to Reality by Makan Sepehrifar and Soroosh Khodami 2025 – Falling in Love with Platform Engineering : The CUPID Way by Makan Sepehrifar 4
5. What we talk about, when we talk about “Developer Experience”? HAPPINESS 5
6. Inherent Complexity Human Factor Cognitive Load Different Persona Diverse Need Varying Skills and Preferences Tool Fragmentation Technical Trade-Offs Constantly Evolving Landscape Organizational Constraints Setup and Overhead Cost Compliance and Security Resistance to Change Internal Developer Portals Deployment Environment Observability Standards Security Best Practices Dev Environment Scaffolders Documentation Template Support and Operation 6
7. Optimum Developer Experience Principles • Single Source of Truth • Self-Service by Default • Golden Path instead of Guard Rails • Minimal Effort and Cognitive Load • Context Preservation • Design for Discoverability • Recognition over Recall • Optimize for Cognitive Flow • Actionable Insight, Not just Data • Collective Ownership with Clear Accountability • Error Prevention before Error Handling • Embedded Learning • Drive with Data 7
9. Internal Developer Portals • Service Providers (Platform Teams) implement Processes not Capabilities 9
10. Promoting the Automation but Delivering the Service through a Form 10
11. Outcome-Driven Developer Experience Transition from “How” to “What” 11
13. Properties over Principles • Understand the "Why” and “What” • Context Matters • Properties Describe Outcomes • Pragmatism Over Dogma/Dream • Balance Competing Concerns • Learning Over Rules Enforcement 13
14. CUPID Composable Unix Philosophy Predictable Idiomatic Domain-based 14
15. Composable Small Surface Area Intention Revealing Minimal Dependencies Works well with Others 15
16. Unix Philosophy Simple Consistent Model Single Purpose vs Single Responsibility Clear Boundaries Human Perspective 16
17. Predictable Consistent and Reliable Deterministic Behavior Observable Properties 17
18. Idiomatic Natural Feel Following Established Pattern Language and Community Standard Reducing Learning Overhead 18
19. Domain Based Problem – Solution Alignment Domain Language Structural Alignment Minimal Cognitive Distance 19
20. Provider / Consumer • Human-Centric Approach • Interrelated Benefits: • Validate Properties at Provider’s Delivery • Measure the Outcome 20
21. 21 “It is about what it feels like to work with code, not an abstract description of code in itself.” -- Dan North
22. Platform Engineering : The CUPID Way Standardization should not be about limiting the options or enforcing way of working, it should be about Unification of Service Deliveries in Composable, Single Purpose, Deterministic, Natural Feeling Offerings sorted around Domain Concepts to increase Structural Alignment and Findability. 22
23. Foundation Tiles instead of Golden Paths Building Blocks instead of Bundled Services • Enhanced Composability • Co-creation Opportunities • Improved Maintainability • Unix Philosophy Alignment • Gradual Adoption • Empower Implementation Flexibility • Evolutionary Design 23
24. What is the ultimate form of Composable Automation • Searchable API Catalog • Granular APIs designed around Platform Engineering Capabilities. • Clear Documentation in “Open API Specification” format. • Traceable Publisher Information • Composable in Automation Pipelines • Providers : Governance in Implementation • Consumers : Autonomy in Usage 24
25. Standardization Opportunities • Glossary and Domain Language • Cross Cutting Concepts: • Authentication and Authorization • Observability and Monitoring • Feedback Gathering • Error Handling • Service Firing Method 25
26. Architecture • How does it look Like? 26
27. Architecture The Rise of Generative AI Agents 27
28. Agentic Processing Loops 28
30. Is this the End ? Not Really ……… 30
31. Model Context Protocol • What was the Problem before MCP: • Context Awareness • Autonomous Implementation • Exponential Complexity of Integration • Model Context Protocol (MCP) solves this problem of fragmented context access and integration. • Protocol uses JSON-RPC 2.0 to establish communication between: • Hosts : LLM Application that initiate the integration • Clients : Connectors within Host Application • Servers : Services that provide context and functionality 31
32. MCP will revolutionize AI, the same way that REST changed Internet. 32
33. How they work Together? 33
35. Demo Time 35
36. “If you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you are not thinking.” -- Malcolm Gladwell 36
37. Benefits • Standardization • Composability • Natural Language Interface • Self-Documenting • Progressive Autonomy • Reduced Context Switching • Bring your IDP into your IDE 37
38. What comes next? MCP Registries A2A : Agent to Agent Cloud Providers releasing MCP Servers 38
39. Thank You Don’t forget to rate this session and provide feedbacks 39