“If your users haven’t built something that surprised you, you probably didn’t build a platform.”
Developer platforms appear to be able to rewrite the laws of IT physics: they boost innovation despite (or perhaps due to) standardizing; they speed up developers while assuring compliance; and they reduce cognitive load without restricting choice.
As one might guess, building such a platform, or even deploying one, is far from easy. The risk of re-creating yet-another common services layer is all too real. After all, from afar platforms do look like another layer beneath application delivery. But the way they are designed and the interfaces they expose are very different.
Many organizations end up with something that’s outdated by the time it’s launched, restricts rather than enables users, and faces a certain demise when its use is mandated in a last-ditch effort to make the economics work. This book will help you design, build, and roll out a successful in-house platform.
Platform Engineering: Innovation Through Harmonization
Standardization has long been considered as stifling innovation: to standardize means to restrict choice. However, there are notable counterexamples. By standardizing the interaction between a browser and a web server, the HTTP protocol became perhaps the biggest innovation driver in recent IT history. Done right, internal developer platforms (IDPs) can utilize this “platform paradox” to build a common, harmonized platform that boosts innovation by enabling developers instead of constraining them.
eBook on Leanpub ♦ Print book on Amazon
There is no separate Kindle version of this book because you can easily load the Leanpub book onto your Kindle (and get a better deal that way).
Why You’ll Like This Book
Harvested from a decade of building successful in-house platforms, this book gets into the nuances of what makes platforms work and why they are different from other IT services. 31 chapters plus interviews with successful platform builders guide you towards important design decisions with sticky metaphors. You’ll be deciding whether your platform is a “fruit salad or fruit basket” or whether it is designed to “sink or float”. It reminds you to “build abstractions not illusions!” and provides actionable design guidance so that your users can genuinely surprise you.
Table of Contents
On 340 pages, the book’s seven major parts accompany you on your platform journey:
| Standing on the Shoulders of Giants | Do you really see further or is the air just thinner? |
| The Fab Four of Technology Platforms | Technology drives business models. |
| Formulating a Strategy | Strategy is the difference between making a wish and making it come true. |
| Becoming a Platform Company | Transformation can’t be understood from the end product. |
| The Platform Paradox | It’s a kind of magic. |
| Mapping Platforms | If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help. |
| In‐House IT Platforms | My way is the highway. |
| IT Platform and IT Services Are Antonyms | After renaming all teams still nothing improved… |
| Mechanisms Not Magic | Making things work is not an implementation detail. |
| Do You Have an Opinion? A Mind of Your Own? | Why we love opinionated platforms but despise restrictive ones. |
| Making Platform Decisions | You want a quick decision? Give me a coin… |
| Procuring a Platform | Why buy it when you can build it? |
| The 7 “C“s of Platform Quality | Platforms might not be forever, but they do have more C’s than diamonds. |
| Fruit Salad or Fruit Basket? | Good platforms are more than a collection of services. |
| Cantilevered Platforms | Horizontal platforms sit on vertical pillars. |
| Will Your Platform Float or Sink? | Most people want to swim–until they realize their cost is sunk. |
| Beware the Grim Wrapper! | What starts well doesn’t always end well. |
| Build Abstractions Not Illusions | Sometimes less is actually less. |
| Failure Doesn’t Respect Abstraction | Time to enjoy a good stack trace! |
| Platform Anatomy | Platforms are the instruction sheets for Lego blocks. |
| Platform Orchestration | From text processor to cloud compiler |
| Ownership and Tenancy | Are you selling, leasing, or providing serviced apartments? |
| Platform Evolution Is a Cube | Platforms may be flat, but their path isn’t. |
| The Shape of Platforms | Platform adoption is all but linear. |
| Charting a Platform Roadmap | Staying on track while laying it. |
| Tiering and Slicing | One size doesn’t have to fit all. |
| Platform, Inc. | Running a platform team is a bit like running a company. |
| The Soft Side of Platform Teams | Platform teams also need interfaces and facades. |
| The Customer‐Centric Platform Team | Self-service doesn’t have to be anonymous. |
| Platform Teams Without Platform | Pyramids last 5000 years, but diamonds are forever. |
Read a free sample chapters on Leanpub.
Buy the Book
Buy the DRM-free eBook on Leanpub or the Print book on Amazon.
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