Big fan of your talk @Bryan Finster. Made my first ever slack just for this Q&A! I think many people make the same mistake you highlighted at the beginning. People are building platforms because it is the hot new thing and it is written about by Gartner🙄 and then when they are not getting good outcomes, they are blaming platform engineering itself. I know other people here talked about internal mrkting but I am curious from your side. How do you tell your boss when you see they are building a platform for the wrong reasons with the wrong focus and it is doomed to fail?

Depends on the goals they have laid out for the platform to fulfill, Are they approaching it from the POV of making it easier to deliver business value? If not, why not? IF they are, they there should be some indication that the platform is lowering the cost/friction of doing that. IS that being measured?