Within the grand scheme of software program improvement, platform engineering is a comparatively new self-discipline. As such, platform engineering groups are nonetheless determining finest practices and messing up alongside the best way.
In a chat at PlatformCon 2025 final week, Camille Fournier, CTO of Open Athena and co-author (alongside Ian Nowland) of the e book “Platform Engineering: A Information for Technical, Product, and Folks Leaders,” explored widespread errors she sees groups making and provides recommendation on easy methods to keep away from them.
“We expect that platform engineering is the following logical evolution that’s wanted by the expertise business to essentially deal with numerous the underlying complexity that we’re seeing at present, particularly in giant expertise organizations,” she mentioned. “We expect it is a essential matter, however we additionally suppose it’s a really exhausting factor to do. We’ve seen lots of people try to battle to construct out profitable platform groups, and so we wrote this e book as an try to assist individuals who have been battling platform engineering to do a greater job.”
RELATED CONTENT: Constructing a tradition that can drive platform engineering success
A standard mistake folks make will not be placing the precise folks on the group, akin to solely together with software program engineers or solely together with operations. Platform engineering groups want a mixture of folks with totally different abilities, together with software program engineers, DevOps, SREs, infrastructure engineers, and programs 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 purpose to handle complexity. “Past automation and past operations — each of that are extraordinarily essential — you wish to be keen to construct new software program merchandise,” Fournier mentioned. “You wish 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 essentially have the ability to create the sort of complexity discount that issues.”
Then again, in case your platform group is barely software program engineers, that introduces an entire different set of issues. Software program engineers might not wish to take into consideration operations. They wish to construct frameworks, they wish to construct a library, they wish to construct a blueprint, she defined.
“There isn’t any 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 operating some issues that folks really rely upon … You’ll construct higher software program in the event you run it and keep it in manufacturing. However the massive 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 really utilizing. Platform groups must be working with their finish customers to grasp how they are going to use the platform.
“You’ve obtained to have that buyer empathy in your platform group that truly cares concerning the folks which can be going to make use of this software program and will get their enter on what you’re constructing, so that you simply’re constructing one thing that truly meets their wants and calls for, and never simply what you suppose 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 suppose their customers want, and the alternative drawback is listening an excessive amount of to customers and implementing each single characteristic they want.
“If you find yourself on this characteristic manufacturing facility, you find yourself constructing these kind of Rube Goldberg architectures that themselves create the identical issues that you simply obtained within the first place,” Fournier mentioned. “Upon getting a Rube Goldberg structure, it’s exhausting to construct one thing that your clients can extra simply plug into and use. It’s exhausting to evolve. You turn into increasingly more of a bottleneck.”
In line 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 state of affairs the place they have already got a system, however they will’t actually incrementally change it, so that they go and construct a wholly new system.
Issues come up as a result of irrespective of the way you suppose customers are utilizing your system, you possibly can’t actually know for positive. 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. Subsequently, constructing a V2 is a excessive threat operation.
One other means through which it’s a excessive threat operation relies on the best way your group is ready up. She referred to Simon Wardley’s pioneers, settlers, and city planners idea. The pioneers are those doing actually progressive work, who’re comfy with threat.
“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, they usually prefer to sort 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 wish to make this technique actually environment friendly and are very comfy on this kind of giant system that has plenty of totally different trade-offs for effectivity and progress.”
A V2 of a undertaking is often began by a pioneer, however platform groups are normally not made up of pioneers; profitable platform groups usually encompass settlers and city planners.
Even when a platform group managed to consider a brand new progressive factor, there’s the problem of migrations. Fournier mentioned there’s really an enormous alternative for platform engineering groups to determine methods to make migrations much less painful.
“If all people on this room takes away one factor, suppose very exhausting about how one can make migrations a lot simpler in your clients,” she mentioned.
