Hello. I am part of a large organization that is looking into Platform Engineering to deal with a lot of pain points. Can someone point me to a place to get started? About the transition of traditional platform services and devops to platform Engineering? Thank you!

hey there, aimee. there are a few books on the topic. i would start with these three and in this order: • https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Engineering-Technical-Product-Leaders/dp/1098153642/[…]id=1733424975&sprefix=platform+engineering%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-1 • https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Strategy-Innovation-Harmonization-Architect/dp/B0D1R[…]g+hohpe&qid=1733424961&sprefix=greg+hohpe+%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1 • https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Engineering-Architects-Crafting-platforms/dp/1836203[…]24946&sprefix=platform+engineering+for+arc%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1

Hi Aimee, books mentioned by Jordan are amazing, I love them, if you wanna complement with other materials find some insightful information about PE here: • Platform Engineering community blogs: https://platformengineering.org/blog • And at the YouTube channel there are even more: https://youtube.com/@platformengineering?si=PtwHMZKPVGmI-X7m • Some of my favorite books: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Topologies-Organizing-Business-Technology/dp/1942788819/ • This post of the CNCF Platform working group is also good: https://tag-app-delivery.cncf.io/whitepapers/platforms/, take a look at the maturity model they propose. • And finally here I shared my experience: https://caiodonascimento.github.io/posts/platform-engineering/

Thank you both very much!

…and of course the infamous PlatformCon - there’s a beginners track (2024 edition) that might be worth watching. If you’re up for a more structured onboarding to the topic, there’s also the new platformenginnering.org courses.

Hi Aimee, I think if you have the chance look into some training it does help accelerate the learning curve - https://platformengineering.org/fundamentals

Hi Aimee, as you have already received a lot of feedback from study sources, I'm going to share a little about my feelings as a consultant implementing the model and now as a client. I think the first big point is to assess the maturity of your teams in relation to DevOps and also automation. Platform engineering tends to evolve companies' DevOps model and cover possible gaps that this model brings. If they are still in a more traditional and siled environment, perhaps the first step is to leverage the DevOps culture and then bring in platform engineering and practices and an IDP. Which brings me to the second point which is automation. How much of your infrastructure and services do you already deliver in an automated manner? Many companies already jump to an IDP without having the technical and tooling capacity to implement an end-to-end infrastructure in an automated and secure manner. With this, I strongly recommend that you evaluate automation maturity and the potential to improve this maturity. Because having an IDP to just generate a ticket for the infrastructure team to upload an environment, you will end up placing another obstacle in the process and overlapping an activity that any ITSM tool would already cover. I hope I helped and good luck with the implementation

For a person who will lead the initiative - combined findings of 5-years of managing platforms, doing it right and avoiding mistakes for a price less than a premium year of Netflix: https://drogaarchitektait.pl/en/efficient-platform-manager-global/

Thank you all! I really appreciate the suggestions!

We have a few blogs on this topic as it comes up often. One of the patterns that happened with DevOps that I'd caution against and I think Gabriel is mentioning is tools != solutions. Buying/building a portal or platform is not the same thing as adapting the workflows, duties etc. You may end up needing a portal or platform (most will, as honestly CMDB and ITSM tools are ill-fitted for this purpose) but choosing it should come after some of the baseline discussions/assessments are had and strategies are decided on. https://arctir.com/blog/intro-to-platform-engineering

CNCF has created End Technical Advisory Board or simply TAB. One of the working groups is focusing on RefArch. https://architecture.cncf.io/architectures/?all=true I totally recommended but I’m bias as I was the one leading it till recently.

Martin Reynolds @ Harness built a Platform Engineering team for a listed company in the UK. He’s a great person to speak to.