What Is Platform as a Product - Clues from Team Topologies @ AXA, Sep 2021
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Savvy organisations are discovering the value of treating their internal platforms as products. But what does it mean to treat a “platform as a product”? What benefits does this give, and why would an organisation adopt this approach? In this talk, Manuel Pais, co-author of the book Team Topologies, explains why the platform-as-product approach can be a game-changer for organisations building and running software-enabled products and services. Using ideas & patterns from Team Topologies - including Thinnest Viable Platform, team cognitive load, and the evolutionary team interaction modes - Manuel explains how organisations like Uswitch have successfully used the platform-as-product model to accelerate and simplify the delivery of software at scale.
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What Is Platform as a Product - Clues from Team Topologies @ AXA, Sep 2021
- 1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies What is Platform as a Product? Clues from Team Topologies Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies 23 Sep 2021 - AXA Tech Leads @manupaisable
- 2. Manuel Pais 3 Independent IT organizational consultant and trainer Ex-dev, ex-build manager, ex-tester, ex-team lead LinkedIn instructor on CI/CD Twitter: @manupaisable
- 3. Team Topologies 5 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press (2019) teamtopologies.com/book
- 4. “innovative tools and concepts for structuring the next generation digital operating model” Charles T. Betz, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research 6
- 5. What is “Platform as a Product” and why should I adopt this approach? 7
- 6. 8 What is a Platform? What is a Product? Example: P-as-a-P Getting Started
- 7. What is a Platform? 9
- 8. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 10 Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/talk-about-platforms.html
- 9. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 11
- 10. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 12
- 11. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 13
- 13. 15 Adopt: Applying product management to internal platforms Trial: Platform engineering product teams
- 15. 18 Adopt: Platform engineering product teams Hold: Layered platform teams [split by technology]
- 16. 19 “We’re still big fans of using concepts from Team Topologies as we think about how best to organize platform teams. We consider platform engineering product teams to be a standard approach and a significant enabler for high-performing IT.” -- ThoughtWorks Tech Radar, Vol.24, p.9
- 17. 20 A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform).
- 18. 21 treat the platform as a product (reliable, usable, fit for purpose) for voluntary internal customers Platform as a Product
- 19. “Create a path of least resistance. Make the right thing the easiest thing to do.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 22
- 21. 24 “Not every platform team is automatically successful, but the successful ones treat their platform as a product.”
- 22. 25
- 23. 26
- 24. 27
- 25. 28
- 26. 29 “need to address organizational and team aspects, namely helping teams clarify their mission, primary customers, interfaces, and what makes for healthy team interactions”
- 28. 31 A valuable platform reduces the cognitive load of stream-aligned teams.
- 29. “Cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory” - John Sweller 32
- 30. Intrinsic (skills) Extraneous (mechanism) Germane (domain focus) 33
- 31. Intrinsic Extraneous Germane 35 “How do I deploy this app, again?”
- 33. 44 “Highly evolved firms use a combination of stream-aligned teams and platform teams as the most effective way to manage team cognitive load at scale”
- 35. 46
- 36. 47 Thinnest Viable Platform smallest set of APIs, documentation, and tools needed to accelerate teams developing modern software services and systems
- 37. A good platform is just “big enough” but no bigger 50
- 38. 51 Platform evolution via Team Interaction Modes
- 39. 52
- 40. 53 strong collaboration with stream-aligned teams for any new service or evolution Platform Behaviors
- 41. 54
- 42. 55
- 43. 56 provide support and great documentation for stable services Platform Behaviors
- 44. 57
- 45. What is a Product? 59
- 46. “product (...) is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer” - Wikipedia 60 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business)
- 47. Product = Holistic User Experience ➔ Functionality ➔ Design ➔ Monetization ➔ Content – Marty Cagan, 2010 61 Source: https://svpg.com/defining-product/
- 48. 62
- 49. 63 A product is optional to use - no-one is forced to use the product
- 50. 64
- 51. 65 A product is carefully designed and curated
- 52. 66
- 53. 67 A product simplifies something for users
- 54. 68
- 55. 69 A product evolves to take advantage of technology changes
- 56. 70 A platform is a curated experience for engineers (the customers of the platform).
- 57. 71 A platform is optional to use - no team is forced to use the platform
- 58. 72 Platforms must advocate for their platform product and “market” it to internal teams
- 59. 73 A platform is carefully designed and curated
- 60. 74 Platforms must be designed with the user in mind (internal teams) - focus on UX and DevEx
- 61. 75 A platform simplifies something for users
- 62. 76 Platforms must help users to achieve goals by understanding user needs and simplifying tasks
- 63. 77 A platform evolves to take advantage of technology changes
- 64. 78 Platforms must evolve the capabilities they offer (adding/removing) with a clear roadmap or trajectory
- 65. 79 A platform needs modern product management (and service management)
- 66. 80
- 67. Example: Platform as a Product 92
- 68. Case Study 93
- 70. 95 Low-level AWS service calls (EC2, IAM, STS, Autoscaling, etc.) from January 2015 to January 2017
- 71. “People were spending more time having to interact with relatively low-level services thus spending their time on relatively low-value decisions.” - Paul Ingles 96
- 72. “We didn’t change our organization because we wanted to use Kubernetes, we used Kubernetes because we wanted to change our organization.” - Paul Ingles 97
- 73. 98 Low-level AWS service calls since Kubernetes adoption in January 2017
- 75. “We wanted to scale our teams but maintain the principles of what helped us move fast: autonomy, work with minimal coordination, self-service infrastructure.” - Paul Ingles 104
- 76. 114 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling)
- 77. 115 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
- 78. 116 ... Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Finally adopted by the highest eng maturity & biz revenue team 2018 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2019 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
- 79. 117 2019 Addressed critical cross-functional needs (GDPR, security, alerts + SLOs as a service) Adoption by HMRT (Highest Maturity & Revenue Team) 2017 Infra platform started with few services First customer (centralized logging, metrics, auto scaling) 2018 Started using SLAs and SLOs, clarifying reliability/latency/etc Growing traffic in platform vs AWS
- 81. 129 Happier users (engineers) No technology bloat Designed to evolve
- 82. Getting Started with Platform as a Product 130
- 83. How well can the team understand the platform abstractions they need to use on a regular basis? 1 - Assess cognitive load 131 github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-Cognitive-Load-Assessment
- 84. What does your platform actually do? Is this what users need? What is the UX/DevEx of using the platform? What should it be? 2 - Define your platform 132
- 85. Who is responsible for what? Who is impacted? How do you collaborate on new platform internal services? Collaboration vs X-as-a-Service 3 - Team Interactions 133
- 86. Resources 134 teamtopologies.com/resources (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/examples (uSwitch, WealthWizards & more)
- 87. Zalando Kubernetes at Zalando Mercedes DevOps Adoption at Mercedes-Benz.io Twilio Platforms at Twilio: Unlocking Developer Effectiveness Adidas Where Cloud Native Meets the Sporting Goods Industry ITV ITV's Common Platform v2 Better, Faster, Cheaper, Happier MAN Truck & Bus How to Manage Cloud Infrastructure at MAN Truck & Bus Farfetch UX I DevOps - The Trojan Horse for Implementing a DevOps Culture More platform as a product examples 135
- 88. Infographics ● Getting Started ● In a Nutshell 137 teamtopologies.com/infographics
- 91. 141 Manuel Pais FlowOnRails Twitter: @manupaisable LinkedIn: manuelpais Matthew Skelton Conflux Twitter: @matthewpskelton LinkedIn: matthewskelton Copyright © Conflux Digital Ltd and FlowOnRails 2018-2021. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com