Within the grand scheme of software program improvement, platform engineering is a comparatively new self-discipline. As such, platform engineering groups are nonetheless determining finest 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 frequent errors she sees groups making and provides recommendation on the right way 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 loads of the underlying complexity that we’re seeing at the moment, 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 try to wrestle to construct out profitable platform groups, and so we wrote this guide as an try to assist individuals who have been battling platform engineering to do a greater job.”
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A typical mistake individuals make isn’t placing the precise individuals on the group, similar to solely together with software program engineers or solely together with operations. Platform engineering groups want a mixture of individuals with totally different expertise, together with software program engineers, DevOps, SREs, infrastructure engineers, and techniques engineers.
Software program engineering is a core a part of platform engineering, since you want to have the ability to write significant software program to be able to handle complexity. “Past automation and past operations — each of that are extraordinarily necessary — you wish to be keen to construct new software program merchandise,” Fournier stated. “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 if you happen to’re going to essentially be capable of create the type of complexity discount that issues.”
However, in case your platform group is simply software program engineers, that introduces a complete 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 is no such thing as a lasting worth if you happen to don’t have operational possession … If you wish to have a platform group that’s not going to get defunded, you higher be working some issues that folks truly depend upon … You’ll construct higher software program if you happen to run it and preserve it in manufacturing. However the massive value of that is upkeep, it’s operations, it’s upgrades. You want individuals 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 truly utilizing. Platform groups have to be working with their finish customers to know how they may use the platform.
“You’ve acquired to have that buyer empathy in your platform group that truly cares in regards to the individuals which might 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 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 group builds what they suppose their customers want, and the other downside is listening an excessive amount of to customers and implementing each single characteristic they want.
“If you find yourself on this characteristic 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 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 accordance with Fournier, if you happen to can mix software program engineering expertise, operational expertise, and a product focus, that’s an amazing 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 state of affairs the place they have already got a system, however they will’t actually incrementally change it, so 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 may’t actually know for positive. Odds are, there’s some group or particular person counting on some a part of it, and transferring on to one thing else will end in reliability points. Due to this fact, constructing a V2 is a excessive danger operation.
One other method wherein it’s a excessive danger operation will depend on the way in which your group is ready up. She referred to Simon Wardley’s pioneers, settlers, and city planners idea. The pioneers are those doing actually modern work, who’re snug with danger.
“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, they usually wish to type 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 wish to make this method actually environment friendly and are very snug on this form of giant system that has numerous totally different trade-offs for effectivity and progress.”
A V2 of a undertaking 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 group managed to consider a brand new modern factor, there’s the difficulty of migrations. Fournier stated there’s truly 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 clients,” she stated.
