The ultimate goal of Platform Engineering is to accelerate the flow of value to the customer by reducing cognitive load in the system at the optimal level of investment.

We help leaders Approach Platform Engineering as a way of thinking and establish appropraite team-of-teams designs

The Team Topologies book was instrumental in proliferating the Platform as a Product approach and coined the term Thinnest Viable Platform. Both have grown since to become key building blocks for organizations which are seen as Platform Engineering success stories.

We continues to elaborate these approaches, break new ground and facilitate technology and engineering leaders in defining sound platform strategies. Our work is underpinned by the key principle of reducing cognitive load for developers as key driver for Developer Experience (DevEx) and team's productivity.

Our holistic approach brings together the key elements for success - scalable platform architectures and matching team-of-teams organizational design which evolves together with the evolution of the platform/s they build.

We approach our engagements by acting as an Enabling team. We aim to build a sustainable capability within the organization we work with. This allows leaders and their teams to continuously evolve their organizational design as response to changes in their environment.

WHAT LEADERS YOUCAN TRUST SAY ABOUT US…

  • Philip Fisher-Ogden, Director of Engineering at Netflix

    ”You inspired many discussions and helped us to think about what model Netflix teams could be/are using.”

  • Crystal Hirschorn, VP of Engineeering, Global Strategy & Operations at Conde Nast

    “At Conde Nast International, Team Topologies was crucial in understanding our current DevOps state and in defining the vision for our aspirational DevOps operating model… The models themselves proved extremely useful artifcats in aligning both stakeholders and teams directly involved.“

  • Azure Cloud Adoption Framework

    “Consider establishing an enabling team that can … support applications and platforms … ”

  • Sam Newman, author "Building Microservices" and "Monolith To Microservices"

    ”I highly recommend Team Topologies to anyone in a leadership role in software development.”

  • Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist for Thoughtworks, co-author of the Agile Manifesto

    ”A crucial insight of Team Topologies is that the primary benefit of a platform is to reduce the cognitive load on stream-aligned teams.”

  • AWS Well-architectured Guidance

    “ [OA.STD.1] Organize teams into distinct topology types to optimize the value stream”

  • Greg Burrell, Senior Reliability Engineer at Netflix

    “… a much-needed framework for evaluating and optimizing team organization for increased flow… Team Topologies combines a methodical approach with real-world case studies to unlock the full potential of your tech teams.”

Real Stories of Platform Leadership

Proven Value

There is surely someone inside your organization who has already heard about Team Topologies. This is just how popular the approach has become due to its impact. Although Team Topologies has generated millions globally for adopting it, we can't fully measure its impact on all individuals who have implemented its principles. These are some of the numbers we have consistently seen:

  • 30% faster transformation implementation with Team Topologies, enabling quicker time-to-market for new offerings.

  • 25% reduction in context switching and a subsequent 20% increase in overall productivity among teams adopting Team Topologies.

  • 40% drop in deployment failures and a 35% decrease in mean time to recovery, bolstering organizational resilience through the adoption of Team Topologies.

Who is using Team Topologies

Uswitch - A Platform as a Product Case Study

Leader’s Golden Path to Platform Engineering

We have curated on this page our best resources for platform leaders to give you the right start and help you shape a high-impact platform strategy. Our team will be glad to help further with the challenges you may face on your journey.

Definition of “Platform”

The biggest misunderstanding we have seen in the Platform Engineering space is the belief that you need a platform.

“Should this (platform) exist?” - the most critical question for any platform leader and the most overlooked by most Platform Engineering initiatives.

The primary goal of all internal platforms is to reduce the cognitive load on its customers, i.e. the developers using its services to serve the organization's customers.

The Thinnest Viable Platform

Where to start when creating a Platform?

Where to start with your Platform?

Many Platform Engineering initiatives in organizations get on the wrong foot by either using big-design-upfront or otherwise not building for the right purpose.

The right purpose is to improve the developer experience (DevEx) and team productivity by reducing the cognitive load on the product teams. This is where and when the real benefit from platforms become real - a fast creation and fast flow of value for the business.

What is “Platform-as-a-Product”?

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?

Matthew 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 - Matthew explains how organisations like Adidas and Uswitch have successfully used the platform-as-product model to accelerate and simplify the delivery of software at scale.

What is "Platform-as-a-Product"?

How to create a product roadmap for a platform team?

Designing and evolving Platform roadmaps

As with any product, we need a balanced continuous Product Discovery and continuous Product Delivery. Just like with your end customer products, the platforms need to deliver on the appropriate experience, jobs-to-be-done and create value for the people and teams making use of them.

The intentional design of interactions between platform teams and end product teams provides for better platform product roadmaps which are based on value rather than wish lists. Dive deeper on this matter with this video from Manuel.

Enabling Teams for adoption, consistency and impact of the platform

While Enabling Teams are temporary in nature, they are absolutely critical for your Platform Engineering initiative. If you don’t have Enabling Teams as part of it, chance are you will not capture the full potential of the platforms you are building.

Enabling Teams are the key to consistent and fast adoption of platforms along with rapid value creation to provide for the return on investment you need to convince business leadership to further invest in Platform Engineering efforts.

Effective Enabling Teams

The best way to start your journey to Platform Engineering beyond the configuration of a set of tools and IDPs.

Focus on value, business impact, Developer Experience (DevEx) and the appropriate design of your team-of-teams organization, incl. intentional design of team interactions between your platform group and the product teams building end customer products.

Here is a small selection of points and lessons from the course.

Why Platform as a Product?

A Product-oriented Platform Definition

Curating the Platform Experience

Who are the true Platform customers?

What is the true value of a platform?

Reducing Cognitive Load

Measuring platform adoption

What if no one uses the platform?

Consistent UX reduces cognitive load

… or consider the dedicated bundles to give you a flying start.