Did you know that, according to Gartner research 
, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams by 2026?
Platform engineering is transforming how organizations approach software development, moving beyond traditional DevOps to create centralized, self-service platforms that significantly reduce developers' cognitive load and improve efficiency.
Platform engineering has emerged as a crucial discipline in modern software engineering and focuses on the development and maintenance of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs).
Unlike traditional DevOps, which emphasizes collaboration between development and operations, platform engineering aims to create a centralized, self-service environment that standardizes tools and workflows. This shift helps reduce the cognitive load on developers, allowing them to focus on writing code rather than managing infrastructure .
Platform engineering’s wide adoption is due to its ability to increase productivity and efficiency. By providing developers with a consistent, self-service platform, organizations can simplify their development processes and improve delivery speeds.
As companies move toward cloud computing, containerization, and microservices architectures, having a dedicated platform engineering strategy becomes necessary. These platforms are designed with users in mind, emphasizing continuous feedback and improvement to meet the changing needs of development teams. This shift reflects a broader trend of treating platforms as products, aiming to deliver high-value, optimized services to internal users.
To get the most out of platform engineering, it’s not only about getting the tech right. It also requires a big shift in how an organization works. This might mean reworking team structures, how tools are managed, and overall workflows (Gartner ).
Core principles of platform engineering
- Standardization and Consistency: Platform engineering emphasizes creating standardized environments that ensure consistency across the development, testing, and production stages. This helps reduce variability and improves reliability.
- Self-Service Capabilities: It provides developers with self-service tools and platforms, allowing them to deploy, monitor, and manage their applications without relying on operations teams. This autonomy speeds up development cycles by reducing bottlenecks.
- User-Centric Design: Platforms are designed with the end user in mind, which brings benefits across the board. For development teams, it means reduced cognitive load as they no longer need to manage services/clusters, reduced onboarding times, and greater efficiency in work, leading to faster development times. For DevOps admins, it means greater control over standardization, management, and security. And for PMs it all equates to better time to market.
- Scalability and Flexibility: Modern development environments are complex and require scalable solutions that can handle varying workloads and requirements. Platform engineering ensures that the infrastructure can grow and adapt to meet these demands.
- Security and Governance: By providing standardized platforms, organizations can enforce consistent security policies and governance models, ensuring that all applications meet regulatory and compliance requirements.
The role of platform teams
Platform teams are specialized groups within an organization tasked with building and maintaining these internal platforms. They work closely with development and operations teams to understand their needs and create solutions that enhance productivity and operational efficiency. These teams play a crucial role in implementing and iterating on the platform to ensure it continuously meets the evolving demands of the organization.
Impact on development practices
Adopting platform engineering can significantly improve delivery speed, process agility, and overall business value. This approach supports rapid application development and deployment while improving the developer’s experience, making it easier to build, test, and deploy software efficiently. It also streamlines the onboarding process for new team members with standardized environments, self-service tools, and well-documented platforms, which significantly reduces the time and effort required for new developers to become productive contributors. While your development teams benefit directly, shifting to platform engineering also hands DevOps admins the tools to enforce uniform practices and improve security protocols. Similarly, Product Managers stand to benefit from the resulting increase in delivery speeds.
In conclusion, platform engineering represents a transformative shift in software development. It provides a structured, scalable, and user-centric framework that simplifies complex processes, fosters innovation, and drives significant value for businesses.
Developing a platform engineering transformation strategy
Successful IT transformation needs a strategy regardless of the size of the team or organization involved. Developing a strategy for embracing platform engineering follows a similar approach.
By tailoring these strategic steps to the specifics of platform engineering, organizations can prepare an effective transformation strategy to achieve significant value through improved efficiency, scalability, and innovation.
Identify business goals
A successful platform engineering transformation starts with understanding the specific business goals you want to achieve. Aligning these goals with your broader organizational objectives ensures the platform delivers real value.
External (customer-facing) goals:
Platform engineering can improve your customer experience with your application or solution through:
- Faster time-to-market
- Improved responsiveness and reliability
- High availability and scalability
- Enhanced compliance and security
Internal development goals:
While ultimately benefiting the customer, platform engineering also brings improvement for your development teams with:
- Improved developer productivity: Streamlined processes and reduced repetitive tasks allow developers to focus on innovation.
- Increased operational efficiency: Optimized resource utilization, reduced overhead, and improved IT operations.
- Standardization: Consistent development and deployment practices minimize errors and support collaboration.
- Enhanced agility: Responding quickly to changing market conditions becomes easier with a flexible and responsive development environment.
- Continuous improvement: A culture of feedback and iterative enhancements leads to ongoing platform improvements and increased developer satisfaction.
- Innovation enablement: A strong foundation allows for experimentation and adoption of new technologies, fostering innovation within your organization.
By setting these comprehensive goals, organizations can harness the full potential of platform engineering to drive both external and internal improvements, aligning technological advancements with broader business objectives.
Taking stock: Your technology landscape and market trends
Before implementing platform engineering, it's important to assess your current state. This involves a two-pronged approach:
Internal evaluation:
- Technology Infrastructure: Analyze your existing tools and infrastructure, including development environments, testing frameworks, and deployment pipelines.
- Development Tools and Workflows: Evaluate the software development tools and workflows currently used by your teams. Are they efficient and well-integrated?
- Skillsets: Assess the skills and experience of your development and IT teams. Do they possess the necessary expertise to adopt platform engineering?
By identifying strengths and weaknesses within your organization, you can prioritize areas for improvement and uncover opportunities to innovate.
External landscape:
- Market Trends: Stay informed about the latest trends in cloud computing, automation, and DevOps practices. These trends shape the best practices for platform engineering.
- Technological Disruptions: Be mindful of emerging technologies that may disrupt how you develop and deliver software. Is your organization prepared to adapt?
Benchmarking for progress
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) offers a valuable platform engineering maturity model . This model outlines the following stages: provisional, operationalized, scalable, and optimizing. By benchmarking your capabilities against this framework, you can identify areas for development and set realistic goals for achieving a mature, efficient, and effective platform engineering practice. Here is a summary of the stages for you to track your progress.
Level 1: Provisional
In the Provisional stage, investment is voluntary or temporary, driven by immediate needs rather than planned initiatives. Adoption is irregular and inconsistent, with no organization-wide strategy in place, and internal platforms are used randomly. Interfaces are custom and manual, requiring high levels of support from providers, and operations are reactive, based on specific requests with no plans for ongoing maintenance. Measurement is done in an ad hoc manner, with metrics gathered informally or not at all.
For example, a team might form temporarily to address an urgent security patch and then disband afterward. Teams might use a mix of cloud services without standard practices or policies. A developer may rely on a colleague to set up a test environment manually. A critical vulnerability might result in a sudden, unplanned effort to patch systems, and a platform lead might run a one-time survey to gather user feedback, resulting in unorganized data.
Level 2: Operationalized
In the Operationalized stage, dedicated teams and budgets are allocated for platform capabilities. Adoption is encouraged through internal directives and mandates, and standard interfaces and tools are introduced, giving users some autonomy. Operations are centrally tracked with documented processes and responsibilities, and consistent collection of user feedback and usage data is integrated into planning.
For example, a dedicated, centralized DevOps team might be funded to manage and improve CI/CD pipelines. Teams might be required to use a standardized deployment tool for production releases. Standardized Terraform modules and Kubernetes controllers could be provided for infrastructure provisioning. An inventory of services is maintained, enabling compliance tracking for software upgrades. Regular surveys are conducted to gather feedback, and user adoption rates are measured.
Level 3: Scalable
In the Scalable stage, investment is data-driven, similar to enterprise product management, with a focus on user experience and performance metrics. Adoption is driven by the underlying value of the platform’s capabilities, which reduce cognitive load on product teams. Self-service interfaces allow users to use and manage its capabilities with minimal support. Operations are centrally enabled, with standardized processes for creating and evolving capabilities. Feedback mechanisms are designed to yield strategic insights and drive the platform's evolution.
For example, platform teams might include roles like product management, with internal roadmaps and feature testing. Product teams may choose internal platform options for their clear value and integration. An API could abstract the creation and maintenance of databases, providing users with necessary information automatically. New OS upgrades might be managed centrally, with test environments provided for application validation. Feedback could be systematically gathered, analyzed, and used to inform platform roadmaps, with dedicated teams driving this process.
Level 4: Optimizing
In the Optimizing stage, platforms focus on organization-wide efficiency and include specialist domains like security and performance. Adoption is mandatory, with users contributing back to the platform ecosystem by improving and extending capabilities. Managed services are integrated transparently into user workflows with automated and customizable options. Operations are managed in a standardized, automated way, with shared responsibility models that enable continuous delivery with minimal user impact. Feedback is integrated into the organization’s culture, driving continuous improvement and strategic planning.
For example, core platform maintainers might focus on enabling capability specialists to integrate their offerings easily. Developers could contribute new features and improvements, enhancing the platform’s capabilities and introducing new use cases. Observability agents might be involved in all workflows, with teams able to customize solutions within the platform framework. Automated release processes could manage virtual machine upgrades, with user input on risk tolerance and early adoption. Comprehensive metrics and user feedback would drive continuous platform improvement, with cross-departmental collaboration to avoid data silos.
Embrace the cycle: Iterate, Innovate, Succeed
Platform engineering is a continuous journey, fueled by experimentation and adaptation. Foster a culture of innovation where teams embrace new technologies, learn from missteps, and iterate on successes. Regularly revisit and update your strategies based on feedback and evolving needs.
Start small, scale smart
Begin with a pilot project. Choose a well-defined goal and measurable success metrics. By starting small, you can test the platform, gather valuable feedback, and refine your strategy before scaling up iteratively.
Continuous improvement is the key
Technology is ever-evolving, and your platform needs to keep pace. Continuously adapt it to meet the changing needs of your development teams. Utilize monitoring tools and automated testing to ensure platform health and identify opportunities for improvement.
Empower innovation with a robust platform
A well-designed platform empowers your developers to experiment and innovate faster. Imagine self-service infrastructure provisioning that accelerates development cycles. Think of seamless integration with cutting-edge technologies that unlock new possibilities. With a robust platform foundation, innovation thrives.
By embracing this iterative approach, you can ensure your platform engineering adoption drives continuous improvement, fosters innovation, and ultimately positions your organization for success.
Case study: Platform engineering transformation for one of our clients
Introduction
A startup specializing in delivering real-time data analytics solutions faced challenges with its existing CI/CD processes. These challenges included inefficiencies in its development workflows, prolonged deployment times, and difficulties in maintaining consistent environments across development, testing, and production. To address these issues and improve overall productivity and operational efficiency, our client, with the help of CodiLime’s specialist DevOps Engineers, started a platform engineering transformation involving its entire organization.
Identifying the problem
The startup’s primary issues stemmed from a fragmented CI/CD pipeline that was difficult to manage and scale. The lack of standardized tools and processes led to inconsistencies and delays in deploying new features. The existing setup also made it challenging to ensure the reliability and security of its applications. Our client recognized the need for a centralized, self-service platform that could streamline their development and deployment processes.
Strategic approach
The transformation strategy was designed with a clear focus on aligning technological changes with organizational goals. The key steps in this strategy included:
Assessment and planning:
- Current State Analysis: We evaluated the startup’s existing CI/CD processes, tools, and workflows to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
- Goal Setting: Defining clear business objectives, such as reducing deployment times, improving developer productivity, and enhancing system reliability.
Building the platform:
- Tool Selection and Co-Creation: Instead of simply selecting pre-existing tools, we took a collaborative approach with our client. We worked with their teams to define their needs and then identified the best-fit solutions. This resulted in the adoption of ArgoCD for GitOps-based deployments and Jenkins for CI/CD pipelines.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Implementing IaC practices to ensure consistent and reproducible environments across all stages of development. Initially, all the work was done manually. However, as the platform matured, IaC became a core principle.
Cultural shift and training:
- Collaboration and Agility: A culture of collaboration between development and operations teams was promoted to foster agility and continuous improvement.
- Skill Development: We conducted training sessions to upskill the startup’s teams on new tools and practices, ensuring they could effectively leverage the new platform.
Implementation
The implementation phase involved a series of steps to build and refine the internal developer platform (IDP):
- Pilot Project: Together with our client, we started with a pilot project to test the new CI/CD pipeline and gather feedback. This approach allowed us to identify potential issues early and make necessary adjustments.
- Scaling: We gradually rolled out the new platform to all development teams, ensuring smooth transitions and minimizing disruptions.
- Continuous Feedback and Improvement: We established processes for continuous feedback from developers to keep improving the platform. This included regular retrospectives and automated monitoring to track performance metrics.
Outcomes
The transformation led to significant improvements in our client’s development and deployment processes:
- Increased Deployment Frequency: Deployment times were reduced from hours to minutes, allowing for more frequent releases and quicker delivery of new features.
- Enhanced Developer Productivity: Developers could focus more on coding and less on managing infrastructure, leading to increased productivity and job satisfaction.
- Improved Reliability and Security: Standardized environments and automated processes improved the reliability and security of applications, reducing the risk of errors and vulnerabilities.
- Operational Efficiency: The adoption of IaC and automated pipelines streamlined operations, reducing the need for manual interventions and lowering operational overhead.
Present day: continuous innovation
Our client’s platform engineering journey is ongoing. Together with the help of our specialists, they continue to improve and innovate by evaluating telemetry solutions and changing the platform to include new technologies. Solution architects now use the platform as a self-service tool to prepare environments for customers, while developers use its self-service capabilities to create setups required for feature development. This continuous improvement ensures that the startup’s platform remains at the forefront of technological innovation.
Conclusion
The platform engineering transformation for our client illustrates the significant value that a well-planned and executed strategy can bring, especially for startups. By aligning technological changes with business goals, adopting a culture of continuous improvement, and involving the entire organization from the start, our client overcame its CI/CD challenges and achieved its objectives. This case study highlights the importance of a holistic approach to platform engineering, encompassing both technological advancements and organizational change.
Summary
In short, platform engineering improves software development by standardizing tools and workflows, providing developers with self-service capabilities, and focusing on a user-centric approach. It offers your organization new ways to align business goals with the needs of your teams by creating a more collaborative environment, improving feedback, and reducing the cognitive load on your developers. Its successes in companies like our client are why it is being widely adopted and also why, by 2026, it’ll most likely be employed in a software company near you.
