What is Platform as a Product @ GitLab Connect Amsterdam, Apr 2024

Savvy organizations are discovering the value of treating their internal platforms as products. But what does it mean to treat a "platform as a product"? What benefits does this give, and why would an organization adopt this approach?

In this talk, Manuel Pais, co-author of the book Team Topologies, explains why the platform-as-product approach can be a game-changer for organizations building and running software-enabled products and services. Using ideas & patterns from Team Topologies - including Thinnest Viable Platform, team cognitive load, and the evolutionary team interaction modes - Manuel explains how organizations like Uswitch and Adidas have successfully used the platform-as-product model to accelerate and simplify the delivery of software at scale.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies What is Platform as a Product? Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies GitLab Connect Amsterdam - 23 April 2024
2. Team Topologies 3 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
3. Remote Team Interactions Workbook 5 Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2022 Available to pre-order now teamtopologies.com/workbook
4. 6 teamtopologies.com/news
5. ⚠ A mandated platform (often) increases the cognitive load of teams 8
6. 9 Waiting for the answer to a ticket?
7. Functional silos 10 Infra CI/CD Monitoring Deployment Poorly integrated services?
8. 12 Confusing APIs?
9. 13 Service unavailable or too slow?
10. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ 14 ⚠ lead time ⚠ deployment frequency ⚠ mean time to restore ⚠ change fail percentage
11. What is a Platform? 23
12. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 24 Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/talk-about-platforms.html
13. “Create a path of least resistance. Make the right thing the easiest thing to do.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 30
14. 58 Thinnest Viable Platform
15. 62 Thinnest Viable Platform A small, curated set of complementary services or patterns that simplify and accelerate delivery when used together. “Use these N services in these ways...” Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash
16. A good platform is just “big enough” but no bigger 64
17. 65 Platform evolution via clear team interactions
18. 67 strong collaboration with stream-aligned teams for any new service or evolution Platform Behaviors
20. 69 provide support and great documentation for stable services Platform Behaviors
23. Clarify platform service boundaries and provide right-level abstractions to reduce the cognitive load on teams using the platform * * Can’t be bought “out of the box” 72
25. 75 A platform is an ever evolving curated experience for internal customers.
26. What is a Product? 76
27. Product: Holistic User Experience Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 79 Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
28. 80 A product is optional to use - no-one is forced to use the product
30. 82 A product is carefully designed and curated
32. 84 A product simplifies something for users
34. 86 A product evolves to take advantage of technology changes
36. 88 s/product/platform/g
37. 89 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform
38. 90 Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams
40. 92 A platform is carefully designed and curated
41. 93 Platforms must be designed with the user in mind (internal teams) - focus on UX and DevEx
42. 94 A platform simplifies something for users
43. 95 Platforms must help users to achieve goals by understanding user needs and simplifying tasks & workflows
44. 96 A platform evolves to take advantage of technology changes
45. 97 Platforms must evolve the capabilities they offer (adding/removing) with a clear (yet flexible) roadmap
46. 98 A platform needs modern product management (and service management)
47. Example 101
48. Case Study 102 https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/ organizational-evolution-accelerating-delivery-of-comparison-services-uswitch
49. 104 Flow of change
50. “People were spending more time having to interact with relatively low-level services thus spending their time on relatively low-value decisions.” - Paul Ingles 106
52. 109 A valuable platform reduces the cognitive load of stream-aligned teams.
53. 126 Flow of change
54. 127 How do we know we’re on the “right path”? (aka Platform Metrics)
55. 128 adoption & engagement metrics Platform Metrics
57. 130 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling)
58. 131 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics Platform Metrics
60. 133 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics reliability metrics Platform Metrics
62. 135 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
63. 136 adoption & engagement metrics user satisfaction metrics reliability metrics delivery metrics Platform Metrics
64. 4 key metrics: ‘Accelerate’ 137 lead time deployment frequency mean time to restore (MTTR) change fail percentage
65. 138 ... Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Finally adopted by the highest eng maturity & biz revenue team 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
66. 141 The success of platform teams is ultimately the success of the teams using the platform
70. 155 “most platform approaches [will] fail if technology remains the primary focus (…) companies that explicitly focus on team interactions, developer experience, feedback loops, and product management will leapfrog those who do not”
71. 156 Happier users (engineers) Reduced cognitive load No technology bloat Designed to evolve
72. Resources 181 teamtopologies.com/learn (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/examples (Uswitch, Croz, NAV, Docker)
73. Infographics • Getting Started • In a Nutshell 184 teamtopologies.com/infographics
74. academy.teamtopologies.com
75. 189 Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd and FlowOnRails SL 2022-2024. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com