Platform Engineering for Architects: Crafting modern platforms as a product

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

Key Features

• Comprehensive guide to designing platforms that create value and drive user adoption
• Expert insights on shifting to a product-centric mindset for architects and platform teams
• Best practices for managing platform complexity, reducing technical debt, and ensuring continuous evolution

Book Description

As technology evolves, IT talent shortages and system complexity make it essential to have structured guidance for building scalable, user-focused platforms. This book provides platform engineers and architects with practical strategies to develop internal development platforms that enhance software delivery and operations.

You’ll learn how to identify end users, understand their needs, and define platform goals with a focus on self-service solutions for cloud-native environments. Using real-world examples, the book demonstrates how to build platforms within and for the cloud, leveraging Kubernetes. It also explores the benefits of a product-centric approach to platform engineering, emphasizing early end-user involvement and flexible design principles that adapt to future requirements.

Additionally, the book covers techniques for maintaining a sustainable platform while minimizing technical debt. By the end, you’ll have the knowledge to design, define, and implement platform capabilities that align with your organization’s goals.

What you will learn

• Make informed decisions aligned with your organization's platform needs
• Identify missing platform capabilities and manage that technical debt effectively
• Develop critical user journeys to enhance platform functionality
• Define platform purpose, principles, and key performance indicators
• Use data-driven insights to guide product decisions
• Design and implement platform reference and target architectures

Who this book is for

This book is for platform engineers, architects, and DevOps professionals responsible for designing and managing internal development platforms. It is also useful for decision-makers involved in optimizing software delivery and operations in cloud-native environments. Familiarity with cloud computing, Kubernetes, and CI/CD concepts is helpful but not required, as the book provides practical guidance on platform engineering, self-service solutions, and managing technical debt.

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

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.