[Platforms] Publish guidance on product mindset for platforms

[taras]

During January 10, 2023, Platform WG meeting, the group discussed the need for product thinking when building an Internal Developer Platform. We saw an opportunity to provide resources to help platform teams and architects understand their users. We agreed to create an issue to track this work.

We can use this issue to collect resources and track progress on this topic.

[taras]

Here is a list of resources I've been accumulating on the subject:

• PlatformCon2022 - Building stuff people will actually use by Michael Galloway
• Customer Interview Guide by Michael Galloway
• Customer Interview Questions by Michael Galloway
• Self-service as a Design Principle by Rob Kingscote and Erin Ahmed Slalom-Anaplan_Backstage_Story_Sep-2022.pdf
• Personas
  • Quality Assurance
  • Compliance Manager
  • DevOps Engineer
  • Infrastructure Developer
  • Application or Service Developer
  • Engineering Manager
  • InfoSec Analyst
  • Engineering Executive
• Information Architecture-Component Library

[lianmakesthings]

I found this talk to be quite insightful on the topic

Marcel Britsch - Bringing Product Thinking into DevOps With the advent of the DevOps movement we have seen an immense improvement in software delivery by closely linking software engineering with deployment and infrastructure. We have also seen an increase in complexity of options: what is needed for one organisation is not what another organisation requires or can even stomach. In fact, experience from numerous DevOps transformation projects shows that we need to consider aspects of DevOps as strategic organisational assets, and in turn, must treat them as we would a product. By adding Product Thinking to DevOps we add the final missing piece to ensure that we meet not only technical needs but wider business expectations. In this talk we show how we can add product thinking to DevOps and demonstrate how this will lead to better outcomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jagvZkmUPhQ

[ronakbanka]

Platform as Product whitepaper by VMware.

why-you-should-treat-your-platform-as-a-product.pdf

[jkleinlercher]

here are also some of my links:

• video and slides of team topologies platform as a product
• course of team topologies platform as a product
• https://engineering.hellofresh.com/advocating-for-a-product-mindset-within-platform-teams-and-how-we-do-it-at-hellotech-part-1-fc1fbf8ae015
• https://simonecasciaroli.com/platform-as-a-product-set-your-objective/

[abhinavm-rafay]

I thought this was a really good one https://thenewstack.io/platform-engineers-developers-are-your-customers/ it also cites good data that can be referenced

[abhinavm-rafay]

@taras I'm thinking it would be good to take some of these resources and come with some of the common themes and summarized items what are your thoughts there? maybe some key things to think about?

[oliverjfletcher]

@taras I'd be interested in helping to contribute to this topic and think that it could be its own section in the whitepaper perhaps? Something along the lines of How to deliver a platform?

In my mind, this should reiterate the importance of the product mindset when defining a platform. As well as the important events that should occur throughout the iterative lifecycle or framework for a platform, i.e:

• Platform Feedback: Customer workshops, interviews, surveys, CSAT, NPS
• Platform Roadmap: Definition or iteration of the platform roadmap
• Platform Discovery: Discovery for new features/services as well as PoCs etc
• Platform Design: Design and document new features, services, etc through ADRs
• Platform Development: Codifying and testing the solution, aka doing the development work
• Platform Delivery: Testing and deploying new features, and services. This should include dogfooding. Ensure observability metrics are defined to measure the success, experience, and adoption of new feature/service release
• Platform Readiness: Complete production readiness checklists, are we ready to launch?
• Platform Marketing: New service or feature is announced to customers including documentation and KT sessions to demonstrate 'golden paths'

Another good article on this topic: https://slack.engineering/applying-product-thinking-to-slacks-internal-compute-platform/

[oliverjfletcher]

Lots of good content here on the role of a Product Manager in the context of a platform https://thenewstack.io/a-platform-team-product-manager-determines-devops-success/

[bryanrossUK]

I'm not sure if it belongs here, or whether it should be its own issue, but I find that platform adoption is usually where orgs begin to think more seriously about a product mindset.

Based on my experience of running platforms in a large enterprise and books like "Crossing the Chasm", I've presented a few times on this and written various articles about the importance of understanding the mindset of your customers/consumers.

I'd love to help contribute towards guidance on product mindset as I think it's the most important element of Platform Engineering. Is there a document that I can help with, or can I help by starting one that includes some of the great info in this thread?

[abangser]

@mluskind @dstengle @Rotfuks (and others) is this something that can/should be under the platform as a product work? This is a fairly old issue and is appearing to be a collection point for resources we may want to reference in other works we do.

I also see overlap with #616 that I wonder if these should merge?