Part III: In-House Platforms
Platforms not only play a major role as part of a business strategy, but also as enabler for IT delivery. IT organizations rolling out an internal developer platform typically experience the benefits but also the challenges of building an IT platform. Despite being built on top of commercial platforms or open-source components, platforms differ substantially from typical IT projects, requiring organizations to rethink their approach from traditional IT services to platforms.
At the same time, expectations for internal platforms are high: they are supposed to boost productivity, increase compliance, and reduce vendor lock-in. IT organizations must therefore be able to set appropriate expectations and understand decision trade-offs.
This part provides IT organizations with guidance on how to build and deploy an internal developer platform:
- In-house IT platforms come in several shapes and flavors.
- Existing service teams will find platforms to be entirely different animals altogether.
- Despite platforms having some magical properties, delivering benefits to the organization shouldn’t be a magic trick.
- IT organizations may be puzzled why developers love opinionated platforms but despise restrictive ones.
- As with any architecture, platform teams must make conscious decisions and understand the trade-offs.
- Procuring a platform is easier than building one yourself, but that doesn’t mean it’s the easy way out.