Platform Engineering

Infrastructure used to be the backbone of companies that ran software they built themselves. Now that cloud vendors operate the computers, those companies can give their own developers the same customer-focused, agile treatment they give outside users. Product management is arriving in infrastructure teams, even though infrastructure remains the operational layer of the business.

This practical guide for engineers, managers, product managers and leaders sets out what platform engineering is and what it is not. It lays out the value a platform brings to developers and the teams they work in.

The central idea is treating a platform as a product, with developers as its users. The authors, Camille Fournier and Ian Nowland, cover the technical and managerial obstacles that most often block that approach. They also cover the problems that appear once a platform has to scale.

The working parts get specific coverage. The book shows how to begin adopting platform engineering inside an organization and what the product manager of a platform team does. It also covers how automation and self-service infrastructure speed up development and improve the developer experience. A final thread covers building a platform team: hiring for it, managing it and advocating for it inside the company.