Within the grand scheme of software program growth, platform engineering is a comparatively new self-discipline. As such, platform engineering groups are nonetheless determining greatest practices and messing up alongside the way in which.
In a chat at PlatformCon 2025 final week, Camille Fournier, CTO of Open Athena and co-author (alongside Ian Nowland) of the guide “Platform Engineering: A Information for Technical, Product, and Folks Leaders,” explored widespread errors she sees groups making and presents recommendation on learn how to keep away from them.
“We expect that platform engineering is the subsequent logical evolution that’s wanted by the know-how business to essentially deal with a whole lot of the underlying complexity that we’re seeing right now, particularly in massive know-how organizations,” she mentioned. “We expect this can be a crucial matter, however we additionally suppose it’s a really exhausting factor to do. We’ve seen lots of people try to wrestle to construct out profitable platform groups, and so we wrote this guide as an try to assist individuals who have been combating platform engineering to do a greater job.”
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A typical mistake individuals make isn’t placing the correct individuals on the staff, similar to solely together with software program engineers or solely together with operations. Platform engineering groups want a mixture of individuals with completely different abilities, together with software program engineers, DevOps, SREs, infrastructure engineers, and programs engineers.
Software program engineering is a core a part of platform engineering, since you want to have the ability to write significant software program with a purpose to handle complexity. “Past automation and past operations — each of that are extraordinarily essential — you wish to be keen to construct new software program merchandise,” Fournier mentioned. “You wish to be keen to construct self-service interfaces and enhanced APIs and safety and high quality guardrails, however you want software program engineers on these groups for those who’re going to essentially be capable to create the form of complexity discount that issues.”
Then again, in case your platform staff is simply software program engineers, that introduces an entire different set of issues. Software program engineers could not wish to take into consideration operations. They wish to construct frameworks, they wish to construct a library, they wish to construct a blueprint, she defined.
“There isn’t a lasting worth for those who shouldn’t have operational possession … If you wish to have a platform staff that isn’t going to get defunded, you higher be working some issues that folks really rely on … You’ll construct higher software program for those who run it and preserve it in manufacturing. However the huge price of that is upkeep, it’s operations, it’s upgrades. You want individuals with these system abilities.”
Not having a product method is one other mistake platform groups make, as this results in constructing in options that customers aren’t really utilizing. Platform groups must be working with their finish customers to grasp how they’ll use the platform.
“You’ve acquired to have that buyer empathy in your platform staff that really cares in regards to the individuals which can be going to make use of this software program and will get their enter on what you’re constructing, so that you simply’re constructing one thing that really meets their wants and calls for, and never simply what you suppose is correct,” she mentioned.
There are two main failure factors generally seen when constructing the platform, Fournier identified. One is that the platform staff builds what they suppose their customers want, and the other drawback is listening an excessive amount of to customers and implementing each single function they want.
“If you find yourself on this function manufacturing facility, you find yourself constructing these form of Rube Goldberg architectures that themselves create the identical issues that you simply acquired within the first place,” Fournier mentioned. “Upon getting a Rube Goldberg structure, it’s exhausting to construct one thing that your prospects can extra simply plug into and use. It’s exhausting to evolve. You develop into increasingly more of a bottleneck.”
In line with Fournier, for those who can mix software program engineering abilities, operational abilities, and a product focus, that’s a terrific baseline for constructing out a platform group.
One other main mistake is constructing a v2. What she means by that is that generally platform groups will discover themselves in a scenario the place they have already got a system, however they’ll’t actually incrementally change it, in order that they go and construct a wholly new system.
Issues come up as a result of regardless of the way you suppose customers are utilizing your system, you may’t actually know for certain. Odds are, there’s some staff or particular person counting on some a part of it, and shifting on to one thing else will lead to reliability points. Subsequently, constructing a V2 is a excessive threat operation.
One other means through which it’s a excessive threat operation is determined by the way in which your staff is ready up. She referred to Simon Wardley’s pioneers, settlers, and city planners idea. The pioneers are those doing actually revolutionary work, who’re snug with threat.
“They discover one thing which may work, after which if they’re profitable, they’re adopted by people who find themselves extra like settlers who’re snug with some ambiguity, and so they wish to form of take one thing that’s messy and clear it up and make it just a little bit extra secure and scalable, after which over time you get the true city planners who wish to make this technique actually environment friendly and are very snug on this form of massive system that has plenty of completely different trade-offs for effectivity and progress.”
A V2 of a venture is often began by a pioneer, however platform groups are normally not made up of pioneers; profitable platform groups sometimes include settlers and city planners.
Even when a platform staff managed to think about a brand new revolutionary factor, there’s the problem of migrations. Fournier mentioned there’s really a giant alternative for platform engineering groups to determine methods to make migrations much less painful.
“If everyone on this room takes away one factor, suppose very exhausting about how one can make migrations a lot simpler in your prospects,” she mentioned.
