Platform Engineering for Architects: Crafting modern platforms as a product

by Max Körbächer, Andreas Grabner, Hilliary Lipsig

Overview

Design and build Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) with future-oriented design strategies, using the Platform as a Product mindset

Key Features

• Learn how to design platforms that create value and drive user adoption
• Benefit from expert techniques for shifting to a product-centric mindset as an architect and platform team
• Implement best practices to understand platform complexity, manage technical debt, and ensure its evolution
• Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

The rapid pace of technological advancements, the shortage of IT talent, and the complexity of modern systems highlight the need for structured guidance in building resilient, user-centric platforms for cloud-native environments. This book empowers platform engineers and architects to implement value-driven internal development platforms. You’ll learn how to identify end users, understand their challenges, and define the purpose of a platform, with a focus on self-service solutions for modern cloud-native software development, delivery, and operations. The book incorporates real-world examples of building platforms within and for the cloud, leveraging the power of Kubernetes. You’ll learn how adopting a product mindset for architecting and building platforms helps foster successful platform engineering teams. This emphasizes early end-user involvement and provides a framework that gives you the flexibility to easily adapt and extend for future use cases. The book also offers insights into building a sustainable platform without accumulating technical debt. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to drive the design, definition, and implementation of platform capabilities as a product that aligns with your organizational requirements and strategy.

What you will learn

• Make informed decisions based on your organization's platform needs
• Identify missing platform capabilities and technical debt
• Develop a critical user journey through your platform capabilities
• Define the purpose, principles, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your platform
• Utilize relevant data points for making data-driven product decisions
• Implement your own platform reference and target architectures

Who this book is for

This book is for platform architects and solutions architects seeking to enhance their skills in designing and building a platform as a product. It also offers valuable insights for decision-makers, platform engineers, and DevOps professionals. While familiarity with cloud-native concepts, CI/CD, and Kubernetes is beneficial, the book builds on these topics to address self-service, cost management, and technical debt. It’s particularly suited to experts tackling the challenge of integrating diverse domains to create effective internal developer platforms with top-notch operational readiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781836203582
Publisher:	Packt Publishing
Publication date:	10/31/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	374
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Max Körbächer is a technology advisor and platform architect who focuses on utilizing cloud-native technologies and open source to simplify the challenges of complex systems. He is the founder and managing director of Liquid Reply, a cloud-native engineering and consulting company. His work history includes roles as an enterprise architect in the media and power utility industry and as a demand manager planning medium and large IT projects. Max is also the founder and, currently, co-chair of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory Group, CNCF Ambassador, Linux Foundation Europe Advisory Board member, and initiator and organizer of the Kubernetes Community Days Munich and Ukraine.
Andreas Grabner is a technical advocate for making distributed systems observable and making automated data-driven decisions across the software development lifecycle. In his capacity as a CNCF ambassador and a DevRel at Dynatrace, he connects and educates global software engineering communities on building and continuously validating digital services for resiliency, high availability, and security. Since his early days, he has been passionate about software quality and performance engineering as it results in building excellent digital products. Andi uses his advocacy platforms to share best practices on topics such as observability, progressive delivery, DevOps, site reliability engineering, platform engineering, and digital business operations!
Hilliary Lipsig is an autodidact and start-up veteran who has frequently learned and applied technologies to get a job done. She's had her hand in every part of the application delivery process, honing her skills originally as a quality engineer. Hilliary is an IT polyglot, able to talk the lingo of both the Operations and Development teams. She's currently a Principal Site Reliability Engineer at Red Hat Inc., working on Kubernetes-based platforms. She's passionate about GitOps, continuous integration, scalable processes, consistency in tooling, and good developer documentation. Her open source activities include contributions to the CNCF Glossary and she's a member of the Code of Conduct Committee for Kubernetes.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Platform Engineering and the Art of Crafting Platforms
2. Understanding Platform Architecture to Build Platform as a Product
3. Building the Foundation for Supporting Platform Capabilities
4. Architecting the Platform Core – Kubernetes as a Unified Layer
5. Integration, Delivery, and Deployment – Automation is Ubiquitous
6. Build for Developers and Their Self-Service
7. Building Secure and Compliant Products
8. Cost Management and Best Practices
9. Choosing Technical Debt to Unbreak Platforms
10. Crafting Platform Products for the Future