Platform Engineering by Camille Fournier and Ian Nowland

A must-read for anyone building tools for developers. How do you build platforms that developers actually want to use?

Platforms Are Products

Internal platforms aren't side projects—they need scope, roadmaps, user empathy, and success metrics. Treat developers as customers, not captives. Their adoption should be earned, not mandated.

Manage Complexity, Don't Pretend to Eliminate It

Cloud & OSS primitives are overwhelming. A good platform curates paved paths, hides glue code, and reduces decision fatigue without removing necessary flexibility.

The Four Pillars of Platform Engineering

• Product mindset
• Thoughtful abstractions & APIs
• Breadth (multi-team support)
• Operational excellence (SLAs, reliability, support)

Earn Trust Early

Goodwill isn't enough. Quick wins and predictable delivery build adoption. Break trust once (through a bad migration or breaking change), and adoption collapses.

Avoid Feature Factory Thinking

Endless request queues = death spiral. Platforms need focus: solve high-leverage problems, not just the loudest ones.

Teams Need Range

Great platforms are built by infra engineers + software engineers + PMs + docs/advocates. And above all: a culture of customer empathy.

Shadow Platforms Are Signals

If teams are rolling their own solutions, your platform is missing something: usability, scope, or trust. Don't fight it—learn from it.

Scale Iteratively

Big-bang migrations and runaway team growth create more chaos. Build incrementally, migrate carefully, and prune scope often.

The Payoff

Done right, platform engineering enables product teams to move faster, safer, and with greater focus on business value—not just infrastructure glue.

Details

• Amazon
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Published: October 8, 2024
• ISBN-13: 978-1098153601