Platform Strategy: Innovation Through Harmonization (Architect Elevator Book Series)

Developer platforms appear to be able to rewrite the laws of IT physics: they boost innovation by standardizing, speed up developers while assuring compliance, and reduce cognitive load without restricting choice. Sadly, many organizations who embark on this journey end up with renamed IT services, a thin veneer over public cloud services, or a rigid not-so-golden path instead. Needless to say, the magic of platforms won’t materialize in such a setup.

Harvested from a decade of building successful in-house platforms, this book reveals what makes IT platforms actually work. You’ll learn why successful platforms are more like a fruit salad than a fruit basket and float rather than submerge. You’ll discover why a thorough understanding of your organization’s technical business domain is equally critical and lacking on platform teams, and why trying to anticipate all users’ needs is a common mistake. The focus isn’t on adding to the long list of promises that platforms make, but on how to make those promises come true.

Following the Architect Elevator concept, the book takes IT architects, executives, and engineers on a shared journey from positioning platforms in the context of IT strategy to defining success metrics, setting up platform teams, and making technical design trade-offs in real-life scenarios. As the discussion moves from the higher levels down to the engine room, each section maintains conceptual depth in an approachable format.

The book isn’t tied to a specific technology like Kubernetes. Rather, it helps the reader understand the key decisions and trade-offs that a platform engineering team must make along the entire journey.