Combining Product Thinking & Spotify’s Backstage • Flavia Naezer & Vijai Ramcharan • GOTO 2024

Platform engineering and developer experiences are emerging fields with high demand, positioned at the peak of inflated expectations in the hype cycle

Focus on building a “thin platform” - add only essential functionality on top of existing cloud/open source solutions rather than reinventing everything

Backstage serves as an effective foundation for building internal developer portals, providing software catalogs and developer experience tools

Product thinking principles are crucial for platform teams:

• Start with user research and voice of the customer
• Create service blueprints to visualize journeys
• Build evidence-driven backlogs
• Deliver value through prototypes and MVPs
• Iterate based on feedback

Key roles needed beyond engineers:

• UX researchers
• UX designers
• Product owners
• Platform engineers with full-stack DevOps skills

Developer experience should focus on:

• Reducing cognitive load
• Standardizing tooling and processes
• Creating paved paths for common workflows
• Automating manual steps
• Improving discoverability of resources

Important artifacts for platform teams:

• Service blueprints
• Product cards
• Customer journey maps
• Paved road documentation
• System architecture models

Success metrics should include both engineering productivity and developer happiness/satisfaction

Align platform initiatives with company strategy while incorporating user needs and feedback

Build platforms iteratively, starting small and adding capabilities based on validated needs rather than trying to solve everything at once