What is Platform as a Product @ GitLab Connect Amsterdam, Apr 2024

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TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies What is Platform as a Product? Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies GitLab Connect Amsterdam - 23 April 2024

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Team Topologies 3 Organizing business and technology teams for fast ﬂow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book

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Remote Team Interactions Workbook 5 Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2022 Available to pre-order now teamtopologies.com/workbook

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6 teamtopologies.com/news

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⚠ A mandated platform (often) increases the cognitive load of teams 8

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9 Waiting for the answer to a ticket?

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Functional silos 10 Infra CI/CD Monitoring Deployment Poorly integrated services?

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12 Confusing APIs?

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13 Service unavailable or too slow?

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4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ 14 ⚠ lead time ⚠ deployment frequency ⚠ mean time to restore ⚠ change fail percentage

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What is a Platform? 23

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“A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 24 Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/talk-about-platforms.html

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“Create a path of least resistance. Make the right thing the easiest thing to do.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 30

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58 Thinnest Viable Platform

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62 Thinnest Viable Platform A small, curated set of complementary services or patterns that simplify and accelerate delivery when used together. “Use these N services in these ways...” Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

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A good platform is just “big enough” but no bigger 64

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65 Platform evolution via clear team interactions

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67 strong collaboration with stream-aligned teams for any new service or evolution Platform Behaviors

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69 provide support and great documentation for stable services Platform Behaviors

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Clarify platform service boundaries and provide right-level abstractions to reduce the cognitive load on teams using the platform * * Can’t be bought “out of the box” 72

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75 A platform is an ever evolving curated experience for internal customers.

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What is a Product? 76

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Product: Holistic User Experience Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 79 Source: https://svpg.com/deﬁning-product/

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80 A product is optional to use - no-one is forced to use the product

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82 A product is carefully designed and curated

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84 A product simpliﬁes something for users

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86 A product evolves to take advantage of technology changes

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88 s/product/platform/g

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89 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform

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90 Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams

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92 A platform is carefully designed and curated

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93 Platforms must be designed with the user in mind (internal teams) - focus on UX and DevEx

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94 A platform simpliﬁes something for users

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95 Platforms must help users to achieve goals by understanding user needs and simplifying tasks & workﬂows

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96 A platform evolves to take advantage of technology changes

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97 Platforms must evolve the capabilities they oﬀer (adding/removing) with a clear (yet ﬂexible) roadmap

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98 A platform needs modern product management (and service management)

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Example 101

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Case Study 102 https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/ organizational-evolution-accelerating-delivery-of-comparison-services-uswitch

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104 Flow of change

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“People were spending more time having to interact with relatively low-level services thus spending their time on relatively low-value decisions.” - Paul Ingles 106

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108

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109 A valuable platform reduces the cognitive load of stream-aligned teams.

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126 Flow of change

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127 How do we know we’re on the “right path”? (aka Platform Metrics)

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128 adoption & engagement metrics Platform Metrics

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129

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130 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling)

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131 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics Platform Metrics

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132

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133 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics reliability metrics Platform Metrics

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134

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135 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traﬃc in platform vs AWS

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136 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics reliability metrics delivery metrics Platform Metrics

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4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ 137 lead time deployment frequency mean time to restore (MTTR) change fail percentage

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138 ... Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Finally adopted by the highest eng maturity & biz revenue team 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traﬃc in platform vs AWS

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141 The success of platform teams is ultimately the success of the teams using the platform

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142

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153

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154

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155 “most platform approaches [will] fail if technology remains the primary focus (…) companies that explicitly focus on team interactions, developer experience, feedback loops, and product management will leapfrog those who do not”

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156 Happier users (engineers) Reduced cognitive load No technology bloat Designed to evolve

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Resources 181 teamtopologies.com/learn (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/examples (Uswitch, Croz, NAV, Docker)

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Infographics ● Getting Started ● In a Nutshell 184 teamtopologies.com/infographics