Rethinking Internal Platforms: Not Just for the Giants
Are internal platforms only useful for large organizations?
Introduction
When I decided to focus my consulting on platforms, I thought I could really only help larger organizations (other than telling small ones to just avoid Kubernetes). I set a lower limit of 8-10 engineering teams or about 50 technical staff and likely much larger. I don't think I've given enough credit to how smaller teams can benefit from platforms (and concrete communication patterns). It turns out that platforms and the principles that make them valuable scale down as well as up.
Platforms as socio-technical constructs
An important aspect of this discussion is how we look at platforms. Hazel Weakly has a great definition of platform engineering: "An empathy-driven approach towards sociotechnical organizational design". It's really important to acknowledge that the ideas around platforms and platform engineering are just as much about how people and teams interact as much as (or more than) tech stacks.
Platforms and scaling
We normally think of platforms as a mechanism for scaling and that scaling comes into play with either large organizations or smaller organizations that are growing fast. But that doesn't have to be the case. Optimizing communication and ways of working can have a big impact even on small teams.
An analogy from sailing
For an interesting analogy to this we can look at the MIT sailing system. In his talk at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2023, Adam Traina details the methods used to take a crew of non-sailors and turn them into a winning team. Much of the changes made to the traditional methods of managing a boat were focused around creating clarity and fast flow. On a boat only 35ft long, instead of using a traditional command and control framework, they split into three distributed teams of 3, 3 and 1. They used common environmental signals to coordinate (race course cues). Common standardized language was used to communicate and technical procedures were simplified (pull the rope until you see the green tape). They also adapted their system as they went, sometimes during the same race.
Ideas from Team Topologies for scaling down
Team Topologies takes on similar ideas in the interactions between teams in a technology organization. The intentional use of a structured interaction model can help at any scale. You don't need to dogmatically follow a particular org structure, but having a well defined method of communicating and coordinating can help even very small organizations. Team topologies also introduces the concept of Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP). This simply states that the platform should have just enough functionality to enable fast flow in organizations. This could mean something as simple as documentation in a wiki and lends itself very well to scaling down to smaller organizations.
Conclusion
Ultimately, fast flow is valuable at any scale. If you are working at in a small company or even a small organization inside of a larger one, you should look carefully at how the ideas behind platforms and Team Topologies can help you.
