Platform engineering has never been hotter, or more fragile. PlatformCon was ablaze with that simultaneous “this will change everything” to “My org is totally failing at this”.

I hear every week from teams who’ve poured months (and millions) into beautiful Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) full of automation, telemetry, and security tooling… only for developers to not use.

There is no more devastating and important problem in platform engineering than adoption. Ron Powell at CircleCI breaks it down perfectly in his community blog this week. 

“You can architect the most elegant platform in the world, but if developers don't use it consistently, you've built an expensive monument to engineering excellence that delivers zero business value.”

9/10 times, I’m giving someone advice, whether on our courses or at an event. The advice is the same as Ron has so perfectly broken down in his article.

• Think like a product manager, not just an engineer
• Optimize for adoption, not just automation
• Measure developer experience, not just system performance

It’s easier said than done, but there are so many resources to getting you on that path. And if you want to succeed at platform engineering. There isn’t time to wait.