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 ebook “Platform Engineering: A Information for Technical, Product, and Folks Leaders,” explored frequent errors she sees groups making and provides recommendation on tips on how to keep away from them.
“We expect that platform engineering is the following logical evolution that’s wanted by the expertise trade to essentially deal with a whole lot of the underlying complexity that we’re seeing immediately, particularly in giant expertise organizations,” she stated. “We expect this can be a essential subject, however we additionally suppose it’s a really exhausting factor to do. We’ve seen lots of people attempt to wrestle to construct out profitable platform groups, and so we wrote this ebook as an try to assist individuals who have been scuffling with platform engineering to do a greater job.”
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A typical mistake folks make just isn’t placing the correct folks on the staff, similar to solely together with software program engineers or solely together with operations. Platform engineering groups want a mixture of folks with totally different expertise, together with software program engineers, DevOps, SREs, infrastructure engineers, and methods 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 need to be keen to construct new software program merchandise,” Fournier stated. “You need 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 in case you’re going to essentially have the ability to create the sort of complexity discount that issues.”
However, in case your platform staff is just software program engineers, that introduces an entire different set of issues. Software program engineers could not need to take into consideration operations. They need to construct frameworks, they need to construct a library, they need to construct a blueprint, she defined.
“There isn’t a lasting worth in case you should not have operational possession … If you wish to have a platform staff that’s not going to get defunded, you higher be operating some issues that folks really depend upon … You’ll construct higher software program in case you run it and keep it in manufacturing. However the huge value of that is upkeep, it’s operations, it’s upgrades. You want folks with these system expertise.”
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 know how they are going to use the platform.
“You’ve received to have that buyer empathy in your platform staff that truly cares in regards to the folks which are going to make use of this software program and will get their enter on what you’re constructing, so that you just’re constructing one thing that truly meets their wants and calls for, and never simply what you suppose is correct,” she stated.
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 kind of Rube Goldberg architectures that themselves create the identical issues that you just received within the first place,” Fournier stated. “After you have a Rube Goldberg structure, it’s exhausting to construct one thing that your clients can extra simply plug into and use. It’s exhausting to evolve. You grow to be increasingly of a bottleneck.”
In line with Fournier, in case you can mix software program engineering expertise, operational expertise, and a product focus, that’s an incredible baseline for constructing out a platform group.
One other main mistake is constructing a v2. What she means by that is that typically platform groups will discover themselves in a state of affairs the place they have already got a system, however they’ll’t actually incrementally change it, in order that they go and construct a completely new system.
Issues come up as a result of regardless of the way you suppose customers are utilizing your system, you’ll be able to’t actually know for positive. Odds are, there’s some staff or particular person counting on some a part of it, and transferring on to one thing else will end in reliability points. Subsequently, constructing a V2 is a excessive threat operation.
One other means during which it’s a excessive threat operation will depend on the way in which your staff is about up. She referred to Simon Wardley’s pioneers, settlers, and city planners idea. The pioneers are those doing actually progressive work, who’re comfy 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 comfy with some ambiguity, and so they wish to sort of take one thing that’s messy and clear it up and make it a bit of bit extra secure and scalable, after which over time you get the actual city planners who need to make this technique actually environment friendly and are very comfy on this kind of giant system that has a number of totally different trade-offs for effectivity and progress.”
A V2 of a venture is usually began by a pioneer, however platform groups are normally not made up of pioneers; profitable platform groups usually include settlers and city planners.
Even when a platform staff managed to think about a brand new progressive factor, there’s the problem of migrations. Fournier stated there’s really an enormous alternative for platform engineering groups to determine methods to make migrations much less painful.
“If all people on this room takes away one factor, suppose very exhausting about how one can make migrations a lot simpler in your clients,” she stated.
