Platform Engineering: A Guide for Technical, Product and People Leaders

Until recently, infrastructure was the backbone of organizations operating software they developed in-house. But now that cloud vendors run the computers, companies can finally bring the benefits of agile custom-centricity to their own developers. Adding product management to infrastructure organizations is now all the rage.

But how's that possible when infrastructure is still the operational layer of the company?

This practical book guides engineers, managers, product managers, and leaders through the shifts required to become a modern platform-led organization. You'll learn what platform engineering is "and isn't" and what benefits and value it brings to developers and teams. You'll understand what it means to approach your platform as a product and learn some of the most common technical and managerial barriers to success.

With this book, you'll:

• Cultivate a platform-as-product, developer-centric mindset
• Learn what platform engineering teams are and are not
• Start the process of adopting platform engineering within your organization
• Discover what it takes to become a product manager for a platform team
• Understand the challenges that emerge when you scale platforms
• Automate processes and self-service infrastructure to speed development and improve developer experience
• Build out, hire, manage, and advocate for a platform team

Camille Fournier is a technology executive with leadership experience ranging from early stage startups to Fortune 50 corporations. She was a founding member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee, and currently serves on the board of the ACM Queue. She has published two other books, The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change, and 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know.

Ian Nowland has been in the software industry for 25 years, most recently 4 years at Datadog where he was the SVP of Core Engineering. Prior, he was at AWS in their early days of 2008-2016, where he was the lead engineer on the launch of Amazon EMR, and the leader of the first 5 years of the EC2 Nitro project. He is currently a cofounder at a stealth mode startup.