Platform Engineering

Part I. The What and Why of Platform Engineering

Innovation is not born from the dream, innovation is born from the struggle.

Simon Sinek, Start with Why

If you’re reading this book because you are already working in platform engineering and looking for tips on how to do it better, you might be tempted to skip these first couple of chapters. After all, they will hopefully tell you what you already know: why you should be building platforms, and the core pillars that make up the “what” of platform engineering. However, we encourage you to stick with us, because many people don’t get it like you do. These chapters will support you in explaining platform engineering to your colleagues, your boss, and your team, when you’re faced with questions like: What is the motivation for doing it? What are the problems we could be solving with platform engineering? And what does our team need to focus on to do it well?

We start this book with the “why” not only to lay out the reasons we think you should care about building platforms but also to share our motivation for writing the book. We are passionate about solving these problems, and we want to see more of you inspired to solve them as well. Platforms are born from the struggles of modern scaled software engineering: the incredible demands we place on teams to manage a vast ecosystem undergoing rapid change, without sacrificing the availability and performance of their applications. This doesn’t mean that platform engineering can solve ...