Platform Engineering and the Hype Cycle: Traversing the Trough of Disillusionment Abby Bangser Principal Engineer Daniel Bryant Head of Product Marketing Cat Morris Senior Product Manager

tl;dr ● Platform engineering is about to enter the trough of disillusionment ○ Gartner’s Hype Cycle for 2024 is providing cautionary insight! ● There are three key challenges: ○ Removing roadblocks for developers ○ Codifying and sharing organisational policies ○ Avoiding platform decay ● The solution? Treat your platform as a product ○ Everything-as-a service ○ Process automation ○ Fleet management

Setting the scene

Platform engineering and the Gartner Hype Cycle ● By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams / Gartner Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends 2024 ● 65% of orgs say “The platform team is important and is receiving continued investment” / Puppet State of DevOps 2024

Navigating over the peak and through the trough linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7199307746356199424

We’re starting to hear of failures and challenges

Your platform must have clear goals Go faster: Platform teams need to provide “everything as a service” to help rapidly and sustainably deliver value to end-users Decrease risk: Teams need to automate manual processes in reusable components Increase efficiency: You need to manage and scale your digital platform and resources as a fleet

Three key challenges to avoid in the upcoming trough

Three key challenges to navigating the trough.. Removing roadblocks for developers Codifying and sharing organisational policies Avoiding platform decay Let’s look at the this from two perspectives: ● Implementer ● Analyst

Our panelists for today! Cat Morris: Product Manager @ Syntasso Previously: Thoughtworker, Platform Product Manager, Business Analyst, Developer Daniel Bryant, Product Marketing @ Syntasso Previously: Chief Scientist at OpenCredo, CTO, InfoQ Editor, Platform Engineer, Developer

Removing roadblocks for developers

Removing roadblocks for developers: Analyst ● 50% of respondents can deploy less than once per week ○ Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2023 ● Platforms teams often navigate a healthy tension between ○ Providing platform “proof of value” to dev teams, and ○ Avoiding “build it and they will come” approaches ● How can you address this? ○ Talk to your customers: the developers ○ Find a specific pain point and fix it ○ Create an “enabling team”

Removing roadblocks for developers: Implementer Key points: ● Shipping faster doesn’t only mean time elapsed waiting for “stuff” to happen ○ We’re seeing teams want to avoid context switching and overburden with cognitive load ○ Also for the Platform and DevOps teams who are having to manage increasingly complicated tooling, which means app teams are waiting even longer as those who are supporting them are context switching… its pain all the way down ● Focus on serving the many, not the few. ○ 20% of effort to serve 80% of needs. E.g Natwest, had great platforms for those trying to do complicated stuff but that still required a lot of knowledge that didn't actually help the majority of their engineering teams ● However, developers only go faster with your platform if they are using it ○ See the above point - a lot of teams where we had a lot of investment into features that very few people use. The ROI just isn’t there for a lot of platform initiatives because we didn’t think of the biggest points of value.

Codifying and sharing organisational policies

Codifying and sharing organisational policies: Analyst 59% [of developers] say that their AppSec requirements limit their ability to release code frequently Harness State of DevEx The biggest takeaway from our survey this year surprised us — not only are Platform Engineering teams supporting security and compliance efforts, but they are tackling and troubleshooting issues around security in a way that suggests this is going to be a much larger trend. 2024 Puppet State of DevOps Report 42% of developers say they can’t release code to production without risking failures Harness State of the DecEx 2024

Avoiding platform decay

Avoiding platform decay: Implementer Key points: ● Not often a thing that we notice until it has set in ● Measuring things may help, but in practice that drops to the bottom of the to-do list while you’re firefighting ● Stepping back and intentionally designing the platform is essential.

Avoiding platform decay: Analyst ● Establishing goals and measuring progress is essential ● Leading indicators ○ Adoption rates ○ Onboarding times ○ Time to nth PR ● Lagging indicators ○ App retention rate ○ Incidents/near misses mitigated ○ ROI (time saved) linkedin.com/posts/billblosen_thanks-to-co-author-annie-hodgkins-garcia-activity-7198399542365466624-7VHd

Previously, at a Syntasso webinar near you… syntasso.io/post/the-1-platform-engineering-problem-you-ve-never-heard-of-platform-decay-webinar-recap

Wrapping up

Conclusion ● Platform engineering is about to enter the trough of disillusionment ○ Gartner’s Hype Cycle for 2024 is providing cautionary tales! ● There are three key challenges: ○ Removing roadblocks for developers ○ Codifying and sharing organisational policies ○ Avoiding platform decay ● The solution: Treat your platform as a product ○ Everything-as-a service ○ Process automation ○ Fleet management

Thank you: Additional information Platform Engineering: Orchestrating Applications, Platforms, and Infrastructure (bit.ly/3UNxQei ) How to Take the First Step Towards Self Serve Internal Developer Platforms (bit.ly/4bLMzMD ) Platform Orchestrators: The Missing Middle of Internal Developer Platforms? (bit.ly/3URBoML )