Within the grand scheme of software program improvement, 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 frequent errors she sees groups making and presents recommendation on learn how to keep away from them.
“We expect that platform engineering is the following logical evolution that’s wanted by the expertise business to actually deal with a whole lot of the underlying complexity that we’re seeing right this moment, particularly in giant expertise organizations,” she mentioned. “We expect this can be a essential matter, however we additionally assume it’s a really onerous factor to do. We’ve seen lots of people attempt to wrestle to construct out profitable platform groups, and so we wrote this guide as an try to assist individuals who have been fighting platform engineering to do a greater job.”
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A typical mistake folks make just isn’t placing the suitable folks on the group, equivalent to solely together with software program engineers or solely together with operations. Platform engineering groups want a mixture of folks with completely different abilities, 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 with a view to handle complexity. “Past automation and past operations — each of that are extraordinarily necessary — you need to be keen to construct new software program merchandise,” Fournier mentioned. “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 the event you’re going to actually be capable to create the form of complexity discount that issues.”
Alternatively, in case your platform group is simply software program engineers, that introduces a complete 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 is no such thing as a lasting worth in the event you 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 individuals truly rely on … You’ll construct higher software program in the event you run it and keep it in manufacturing. However the large price of that is upkeep, it’s operations, it’s upgrades. You want folks 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 truly utilizing. Platform groups should be working with their finish customers to grasp how they may use the platform.
“You’ve obtained to have that buyer empathy in your platform group that really cares concerning 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 really meets their wants and calls for, and never simply what you assume is true,” she mentioned.
There are two main failure factors generally seen when constructing the platform, Fournier identified. One is that the platform group builds what they assume their customers want, and the alternative drawback is listening an excessive amount of to customers and implementing each single function they want.
“If you find yourself on this function manufacturing unit, you find yourself constructing these kind of Rube Goldberg architectures that themselves create the identical issues that you just obtained within the first place,” Fournier mentioned. “Upon getting a Rube Goldberg structure, it’s onerous to construct one thing that your prospects can extra simply plug into and use. It’s onerous to evolve. You change into an increasing number of of a bottleneck.”
In accordance with Fournier, in the event you can mix software program engineering abilities, operational abilities, and a product focus, that’s a fantastic 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 scenario the place they have already got a system, however they’ll’t actually incrementally change it, so that they go and construct a wholly new system.
Issues come up as a result of regardless of the way you assume customers are utilizing your system, you may’t actually know for certain. Odds are, there’s some group or particular person counting on some a part of it, and shifting on to one thing else will lead to reliability points. Due to this fact, constructing a V2 is a excessive danger operation.
One other method during which it’s a excessive danger operation depends upon 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 comfy with danger.
“They discover one thing that 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 prefer to form of take one thing that’s messy and clear it up and make it a bit bit extra secure and scalable, after which over time you get the true city planners who need to make this technique actually environment friendly and are very comfy on this kind of giant system that has numerous completely different trade-offs for effectivity and progress.”
A V2 of a mission is usually began by a pioneer, however platform groups are often not made up of pioneers; profitable platform groups usually include settlers and city planners.
Even when a platform group managed to consider a brand new modern factor, there’s the problem of migrations. Fournier mentioned there’s truly an enormous alternative for platform engineering groups to determine methods to make migrations much less painful.
“If everyone on this room takes away one factor, assume very onerous about how one can make migrations a lot simpler in your prospects,” she mentioned.
