Platform Engineering Best Practices
This blog was originally published in the Typo blog.
Platform engineering is a relatively new and evolving field in the tech industry. To make the most of Platform Engineering, there are several best practices you should be aware of.
In this blog, we explore these practices in detail and provide insights into how you can effectively implement them to optimize your development processes and foster innovation.
What is Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering, an emerging technology approach, is the practice of designing and managing the infrastructure and tools that support software development and deployment. This is to help them perform end-to-end operations of software development lifecycle automation. The aim is to reduce overall cognitive load, increase operational efficiency, and remove process bottlenecks by providing a reliable and scalable platform for building, deploying, and managing applications.
Importance of Platform Engineering
- Platform engineering improves developer experience by offering self-service capabilities and standardized tools. It allows the team to focus on building features and deliver products more efficiently and effectively.
- It increases the reliability and security of applications by providing a stable foundation and centralized infrastructure management.
- Engineering teams can deploy applications and updates faster with a robust and automated platform that accelerates the time-to-market for new features and products.
- Focusing on scalable solutions allows Platform engineering to enable the underlying systems to handle increased demand without compromising performance and grow their applications and services efficiently.
- A solid platform foundation allows teams to experiment with new technologies and methodologies. Hence, supporting innovation and the adoption of modern practices.
Platform Engineering Best Practices
The Platform Must be Developer-Centric
Always treat your platform engineering team as paying customers. This allows you to understand developers’ pain points, preferences, and requirements and focus on making the development process easier and more efficient. Some of the key points that are taken into consideration:
- User-friendly tools to streamline the workflow.
- Must feel at ease while navigating the platform.
- Seamlessly integrates with existing and other third-party applications.
- Allow them to access and manage resources without needing extensive support.
When the above-mentioned needs and requirements are met, end-users are likely to adopt this platform enthusiastically. Hence, making the platform more effective and productive.
Adopt Security Best Practices
Implement security control at every layer of the platform. Make sure that audit security posture is conducted regularly and that everyone on the team is updated with the latest security patches. Besides this, conduct code reviews and code analysis to identify and fix security vulnerabilities quickly. Educate your platform engineering team about security practices and offer them ongoing training and mentorship so they are constantly upskilling.
Foster Continuous Improvement and Feedback Loops
Continuous improvement must be a core principle to allow the platform to evolve according to technical trends. Integrate feedback mechanisms with the internal developer platform to gather insights from the software development lifecycle. Regularly review and improve the platform based on feedback from development teams. This enables rapid responses to any impediments developers face.
Encourage a Culture of Collaboration
Foster communication and knowledge sharing among platform engineers. Align them with common goals and objects and recognize their collaborative efforts. This helps teams to understand how their work contributes to the overall success of the platform which further, fosters a sense of unity and purpose. It also ensures that all stakeholders understand how to effectively use the platform and contribute to its continuous improvement.
Platform Team must have a Product Mindset
View your internal platform as a product that requires management and ongoing development. The platform team must be driven by a product mindset that includes publishing roadmaps, gathering user feedback, and fostering a customer-centric approach. They must focus on what offers real value to their internal customers and app developers based on the feedback, so it addresses the pain points quickly.
Maintain DevOps Culture
Emphasize the importance of a DevOps culture that prioritizes collaboration between development and operations teams that focuses on learning and improvement rather than assigning time. It is crucial to foster an environment where platform engineering can thrive and foster a shared responsibility for the software lifecycle.
Typo — An Effective Platform Engineering Tool
Typo is an effective platform engineering tool that offers SDLC visibility, developer insights, and workflow automation to build better programs faster. It can seamlessly integrate into tech tool stacks such as GIT versioning, issue tracker, and CI/CD tools.
It also offers comprehensive insights into the deployment process through key metrics such as change failure rate, time to build, and deployment frequency. Moreover, its automated code tool helps identify issues in the code and auto-fixes them before you merge to master.
Typo has an effective sprint analysis feature that tracks and analyzes the team’s progress throughout a sprint. Besides this, It also provides 360 views of the developer experience i.e. captures qualitative insights and provides an in-depth view of the real issues.
Conclusion
Platform Engineering is reshaping how we approach software development by streamlining infrastructure management and improving operational efficiency. Adhering to best practices allows organizations to harness the full potential of their platforms. Embracing these principles will optimize your development processes, drive innovation, and ensure a stable foundation for future growth.
