Platform Engineering

Chapter 10. Managing Stakeholder Relationships

Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty, this time. “If you tell me what language ‘fiddle-de-dee’ is, I’ll tell you the French for it!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said, “Queens never make bargains.”

“I wish Queens never asked questions,” Alice thought to herself.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, Chapter 9

Back in Chapter 5, we talked about how stakeholder management differs from product management. Product management is about building the right things for your customers; stakeholder management is about convincing their leaders you made the right choices. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how well you are delivering a rock-solid, customer-focused platform: if key stakeholders don’t believe in your investments, you will be unsuccessful. When your stakeholders don’t support you, a charismatic peer with a compelling vision can bleed off valuable investment on the basis of a good idea and a little execution, even when you know that the new platform can’t come close to providing all of the features of your current offering.

The painful truth of building internal-focused platforms is that slow delivery and an indirect tie to business value means your stakeholders have an outsized influence on your success. If you want to ensure that your team has enough cover to build the platforms they need to build without getting thrashed by other leadership ...