The Platform Engineering Journey
Stephen Tulp
December 4, 2024
3 minutes to read
Overview
It’s all about the journey not the destination! As you embark on the journey with Platform Engineering, you will most likely fall into one of three buckets. Looking to start, started and wanting to improve.
This aligns with these 3 Platform Engineering motions:
- ‘Start Right:’ Focuses on equipping developers with self-service tools, enabling them to kickstart their projects while adhering to an organisations best practices defined through templates and policies.
- ‘Stay Right:’ Maintain compliance as projects grow and ensuring that developers continue to follow those best practices via continuous automation and monitoring.
- ‘Get Right:’ Assist developers in bringing their existing DevOps infrastructure, code, and applications into compliance within an organisations evolving standards.
Microsoft has created a Platform Engineering Capability Model that provides a great starting point for organisations investing in Platform Engineering, this model covers six (6) core capability and aligns with the key areas in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s platform engineering maturity model.
Current State
The first step is to identify your organisations maturity level across these capabilities, ranging from Level 1: Initial, all the way up to Level 5: Optimising.
- To start download the Blank Chart
- Download the Capability Info to understand the criteria for each level and use it as a reference.
Investment
How are staff and funds allocated to platform capabilities?
- Budget & Staffing
- Scope Management
- Measuring ROI
Adoption
Why and how do users discover and use your platform engineering solution and its capabilities?
- Discover Services, Tools and Technology
- Choose Services, Tools and Technology
- Use Services, Tools and Technology
Governance
How do you ensure that your users have access to the resources and capabilities that they need and that costs, data, and IP are managed appropriately?
- Define Policies and Frameworks
- Implement Policies
- Monitor & Mitigate
- Manage Access
Provisioning & management
How do your users create, deploy, and manage resources?*
- Define Provisioning Processes
- Respond to and Manage Requests
- Monitor Resource Allocation
Interfaces
How do users interact with, and consume platform capabilities?
- Setup Environment
- Diagnose Application Behavior
Measurement & feedback
What is your organisation’s process for gathering and incorporating feedback and how do you measure success of your platform engineering practices?
- Measure Success
- Feedback Collection
- Analyse Feedback
- Engage Stakeholders
- Document Learnings
What are our Future Goals
Some examples of the completed model are below.
A couple of important notes.
- You can skip more than one level but be realistic, its Crawl, Walk, Run, Sprint not Crawl -> Sprint!
- This isn’t a one time activity, depending on the investment in Platform Engineering, this should be revisited again in the future.
Conclusion
If you don’t want to go through the above and want a more guided experience, then take a look at Platform Engineering Capability Model Survey that will go through the assessment in more detail.
The Platform Engineering Capability Model is an excellent tool for assessing an organisations current state and envisioning its future goals. As Platform Engineering becomes increasingly vital, keeping pace with rapid technological advancements demands a dedication to continuous learning and adaptation. Whether you are at the beginning of your journey or well on your way, this model can guide your progress.