Creating High-Impact Platform Teams for Better Software Delivery
Introduction
Software development is becoming more complex, making it harder for teams to deliver at scale. Platform engineering helps by providing developers with the tools, automation, and infrastructure to ship software efficiently. Instead of struggling with infrastructure management, developers can focus on building great products.
Platform teams enable this shift by creating reusable services, improving compliance, and reducing cognitive load. As a result, companies adopting platform engineering see better scalability and developer productivity. Gartner says 80% of large software engineering organizations will have platform teams by 2026, up from 45% in 2022.
This blog examines the function of platform teams, what sets great platforms apart, best practices for building high-impact teams, and challenges in platform adoption. Whether an organization is introducing platform engineering or refining its approach, a strong platform strategy is essential for driving efficiency and innovation in software delivery.
Understanding the Function of Platform Teams
A platform engineering team builds and maintains the tools, automation, and infrastructure that make software development smoother and more efficient. Instead of every development team managing infrastructure on their own, platform teams create shared solutions that speed up delivery and improve reliability.
These teams include platform engineers who design and manage core platform components and ensure everything runs smoothly. DevOps engineers automate processes and streamline deployments, making it easier for developers to release updates quickly.
Infrastructure architects focus on designing scalable, secure, and cost-efficient systems, while Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) ensure the platform stays stable and available. Security specialists work alongside them to embed security best practices into every stage of development.
By handling these critical functions, platform teams reduce complexity for developers and allow them to focus on building great products. They also help organizations standardize infrastructure, improve compliance, and enhance overall system performance. As software development scales, a strong platform team becomes essential for maintaining efficiency and reliability.
What Makes a Great Platform?
A great platform is more than just infrastructure—it’s a product that helps developers work faster and build better software. The best platforms remove roadblocks, improve security, and scale with a company’s needs. Here’s what sets them apart:
1. Designed Like a Product
A platform should be treated like a product made for developers. It’s not just a set of tools—it needs regular updates and improvements based on feedback. The best platforms evolve to meet developers’ needs, making their work more effortless.
2. Simple and Easy to Use
If a platform is complex and challenging to navigate, developers will find ways to avoid it. A great platform has a clean interface, clear navigation, and simple workflows that help teams get things done quickly. The goal is to remove frustration, not add more.
3. Self-Service for Developers
Developers should be able to get what they need without waiting on another team. Whether setting up infrastructure, deploying code, or accessing resources, a great platform allows teams to do these tasks independently. This reduces delays and keeps development moving smoothly.
4. Clear and Helpful Documentation
No matter how good a platform is, developers need guidance to use it effectively. The best platforms have clear, up-to-date documentation with step-by-step guides and FAQs. Good documentation makes onboarding easy and helps teams solve problems without unnecessary back-and-forth.
5. Modular and Flexible
Every team has different needs, so a platform should be flexible. A great platform offers services that can be used independently, letting teams pick what works best for them. This way, teams benefit from a shared system while still being free to work in their way.
6. Security Built-In
Security should be part of the platform, not an afterthought. The best platforms include security features like authentication, encryption, and automatic compliance checks. This keeps company data safe without doing extra work for developers.
7. A Central Hub for Developers
Developers shouldn’t have to dig through different tools to find their needs. A great platform has an internal portal where teams can access services, track deployments, and find documentation in one place. This makes everything easier to find and keeps development organized.
By focusing on usability, flexibility, and security, companies can create a platform that truly supports their teams.
Best Practices to Build a High-Impact Platform Engineering Team
A solid platform engineering team building is key to creating infrastructure that’s not just scalable and efficient but also makes developers’ jobs easier. To make that happen, organizations need to focus on setting clear goals, making life easier for developers, automating repetitive tasks, and continuously improving everything as they go.
Here are some practical steps to help you build a platform engineering team that can make a difference.
1. Prioritization, Objectives, and Key Results
Setting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) provides measurable goals for the team, helping track progress while maintaining flexibility to accommodate critical ad-hoc requests. A well-defined prioritization process ensures the platform team delivers the most impactful features without being overwhelmed by constant requests.
2. Thinking Consumer First
Platform teams primarily serve developers, yet many assume developers will figure things out on their own. Platform teams should provide clear documentation, starter kits, and usage examples to improve adoption and usability. A consumer-first approach involves:
- Building user-friendly abstractions – Simplified interfaces and APIs reduce developer friction and improve adoption.
- Ensuring backward compatibility – When changes are necessary, provide clear migration guides to minimize disruption.
- Automating code generation – Prebuilt templates help developers get started quickly, reducing onboarding time.
By treating developers as customers, platform teams create intuitive, adaptable solutions that are easy to integrate into existing workflows.
3. Covering Breadth and Depth
An effective platform engineering team supports the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), not just runtime or build processes. To achieve this, platform teams must:
- Identify integration touchpoints across planning, provisioning, deployment, and monitoring.
- Collaborate with product teams through demos, discussions, and business requirement reviews.
- Maintain visibility across SDLC phases to ensure seamless platform adoption.
A well-integrated platform enables stream-aligned teams to develop, test, and deploy efficiently without operational bottlenecks.
4. Building Confidence via Automation Tests
Since platform teams manage core infrastructure and services, testing is critical to ensure stability and reliability. Automated tests should cover:
- Smoke tests – Run on every change to detect issues early.
- Regression tests – Ensure platform stability before each release.
- End-to-end tests – Validate integration across different system components.
Releasing only tested and validated versions prevents issues downstream, reducing support overhead and increasing confidence in platform reliability.
5. Increasing Iteration Speed
Faster iteration cycles enable quicker feedback loops and continuous improvement. Platform teams should optimize development and testing workflows to minimize delays. Key strategies include:
- Optimizing local development and testing – Provide easy-to-run environments for developers.
- Simplifying infrastructure interactions – Reduce complexity in provisioning and deployment.
- Enhancing onboarding efficiency – Offer documentation, templates, and self-serve tools.
Higher iteration speed improves developer productivity, accelerates feature rollouts, and enhances the overall developer experience.
6. Effective Release Management
Releases should be well-documented and easy to adopt. A strong release management strategy includes:
- Maintaining detailed changelogs – Developers should know what changes have been made and how they impact their workflows.
- Providing migration plans – If breaking changes occur, ensure teams have a clear path forward.
- Building anticipation – Previewing features through demos, videos, or internal announcements can increase engagement.
- Public roadmaps – Transparency around upcoming features allows developers to plan and contribute feedback.
A well-planned release process helps teams roll out updates smoothly and makes it easier for engineers to adopt new changes.
7. Establishing a Strong Support Workflow
Reliable support plays a vital role in platform adoption. To stay productive, platform teams should keep sprint work separate from support tasks while ensuring developers get the help they need. Here are some best practices:
- Maintaining a dedicated support board – Track requests separately from feature development.
- Using on-call support tools – Implement PagerDuty or similar systems for incident triage.
- Setting up auto-routing alerts – Detect platform-related issues in consuming services and route them to the right team.
A well-defined support workflow minimizes disruptions and ensures developers receive timely assistance.
8. Building Metrics for Continuous Improvement
Measuring platform effectiveness helps teams refine their approach and demonstrate value. Key metrics fall into two categories:
- Technical Metrics: Adoption rates, version upgrades, number of bug fixes, release frequency.
- Business Metrics: Impact on productivity, reduction in deployment time, security improvements.
Monitoring and analyzing these metrics enable platform teams to optimize their solutions, identify pain points, and enhance efficiency.
Challenges in Platform Adoption
Adopting a platform engineering approach isn’t always smooth. Here are some common challenges teams face:
1. Keeping Up with Fast-Changing Technology
New tools, frameworks, and security updates are constantly emerging. Platform teams must support different technologies while ensuring everything runs smoothly. Without clear guidelines, teams may end up using different tools, leading to inconsistency and extra work.
2. Making Platforms Easy for Developers
Platforms should make developers' jobs easier, not harder. However, if the platform is too complex or scattered across multiple tools, it can slow teams down. Without regular feedback, platform teams might build solutions that don’t truly help users.
3. Getting Out of Firefighting Mode
Many platform teams spend more time fixing urgent issues than improving the platform. Constant interruptions prevent them from working on long-term improvements, keeping them stuck in a reactive cycle.
4. Avoiding Overload on Engineers
Platform engineers deal with multiple tools, business logic, and ongoing requests. Managing all this information at once can be overwhelming, leading to burnout and mistakes.
5. Staying Aligned with Business Goals
Platform teams often work in isolation, disconnected from the company’s larger strategy. Without a clear link to business goals, getting support, funding, and adoption from other teams is harder.
Solving these challenges requires a structured approach, strong communication, and a focus on usability. A well-designed platform helps teams work efficiently and drives long-term success.
Conclusion
Platform engineering is all about making development smoother, faster, and more efficient. A great platform works like a well-designed product—easy to use, self-service, well-documented, and secure. Strong platform teams automate repetitive tasks, simplify workflows, and keep improving based on feedback so developers can focus on building great software.
As software development becomes more complex, platform engineering will be key to scaling efficiently while maintaining security and speed. Companies that invest in strong platforms will see higher productivity and a better developer experience. The key is to stay adaptable—evolving with new technologies and refining processes to meet changing needs.
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FAQs
1. What is a Platform Team in Software Engineering?
A platform team in software engineering is responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure, tools, and automation that support software development. They create reusable services and solutions that help development teams focus on writing code rather than managing complex systems.
2. What Does a Platform Engineering Team Do?
A platform engineering team designs, builds and manages the infrastructure that enables smooth software delivery. They ensure everything from cloud infrastructure to deployment pipelines works efficiently. This includes automating processes, improving scalability, handling security, and reducing complexity for developers, allowing them to focus on creating great products.
3. How Does a Platform Team Differ from Other Engineering Teams?
Platform teams differ from other engineering teams by focusing on the foundational infrastructure rather than specific product features. While other engineering teams work on developing applications or features, platform teams ensure the tools, services, and systems are in place to support that development. They provide shared services like CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and infrastructure management.
4. How to Measure Platform Engineering Team Responsibilities?
Platform engineering team responsibilities can be measured by evaluating key metrics like uptime, performance, and scalability of the platform. Other factors include the speed and efficiency of deployments, how well automation is implemented, and the level of support provided to other engineering teams. Success is also reflected in developer productivity, as a well-designed platform helps teams work faster with fewer issues.
