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

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

What defines a Platform Team? What they do

Platform teams provide knowledge, support, and the building blocks that feature teams use to ship business-facing functionality at a faster pace

The mission of the platform team, should you choose to accept it, is enabling product teams to get things done

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

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

Abstracting one level up and thinking of Interactions and Collaboration Models

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

The Beat of a Very Busy Team

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

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

˜430 answered in Qx 70% < 3 days Hacking Week!

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

No content

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

No content

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

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

No content

Reusability Sustainability

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

Our Team Today

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

Wrapping up: The Challenge of Capacity

● 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

Thanks for listening! Questions? Continue conversation in Roundtable 7 at 3pm Stage C Ask questions using Slido