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.

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

12. 14
https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar
May 2020

13. 15
Adopt: Applying product
management to internal
platforms
Trial: Platform engineering
product teams

14. 17
https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar
Apr 2021

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

20. 23
https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report
Jul 2021

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”

27. 30
Team Cognitive Load

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?”

32. (Intrinsic)
] Extraneous [
Germane
38

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”

34. 45
Thinnest Viable Platform

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

69. 94
Flow of change

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

74. 99
https://teamtopologies.com/industry-examples/organizational-ev
olution-accelerating-delivery-of-comparison-services-uswitch

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

80. 118
Flow of change

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

89. academy.teamtopologies.com

90. teamtopologies.com/news
teamtopologies.com/training

91. 141
Manuel Pais
FlowOnRails
Twitter: @manupaisable
LinkedIn: manuelpais
Matthew Skelton
Conflux
Twitter: @matthewpskelton
LinkedIn: matthewskelton
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