Platform Engineering

Chapter 14. Your Platforms Are Loved

What’s love got to do, got to do with it? What’s love, but a second-hand emotion?

Tina Turner

We know a head of platform product management who boils his key metrics down to “simpler, faster, cheaper, and your users love it.” This usually prompts two questions. The first is what Tina Turner asks in this chapter’s opening quote, which we think is a totally legitimate question: why should it be a goal for a system targeted at internal engineers to be done so well that users love using it? “Love” implies that you are appealing to your users’ emotions. This is important for a company selling products and looking to establish brand affinity so users will keep buying them, but is it really something for an internal platform to aspire toward?

That ties into the second question: is winning platform users’ love worth the cost? Massive tech companies can build bespoke internal tools that their employees rave about for years afterward (yes, we are talking about you, people from Google and Netflix), but few of us can spend that much effort and time optimizing for our users’ needs—it just doesn’t seem to make economic sense unless you’re a massive technology business that has margins to match.

To answer both questions, it’s worth reflecting on the everyday tools you love: things you use in the garage, kitchen, bathroom, etc. Rarely are they the most expensive tools on the market. Rarely are they the ones that try to be all things to all people. Instead, ...