In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, development teams face the challenge of improving their autonomy while adhering to organizational governance. Striking this balance is key for driving innovation and ensuring that teams can focus on what truly matters: delivering high-quality products efficiently.

In this blog post, we’ll explore several key topics that highlight how organizations can empower their developers while maintaining necessary standards. We’ll discuss the importance of team autonomy and how it enhances productivity, the impact of reducing context switching and cognitive overload, and the concept of treating your platform as a product. Additionally, we’ll delve into the significance of standards enforcement and how it contributes to a cohesive development environment.

By the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of some of the most common challenges faced by engineering teams daily, along with effective strategies to overcome them.

Ready? Let’s do this!

An Internal Developer Portal (IDP) is the entry point within an organization for developers to access tools, resources, and documentation they need to effectively build, deploy, and manage applications or services. 

The purpose of an IDP is to provide autonomy for developers while at the same time improving governance for organizations through standardization of best practices and access controls. By standardizing best practices and implementing access controls, Internal Developer Portals allow teams to operate independently, all while adhering to essential guardrails that ensure compliance and quality.

While Internal Developer Portals are designed to tackle a variety of challenges for different users, this multifaceted approach can make it difficult to get them just right. Striking the perfect balance between flexibility and structure is key to unlocking their full potential.
We recently released a whitepaper discussing Internal Developer Platforms and Portals, along with key considerations for selecting the right one. If you’re still uncertain about your options, I suggest downloading it here.

This article focuses on identifying and implementing the right balance between providing developers the autonomy they need to be effective in their tasks and at the same time provide relevant insights to the business and teams to improve the way they collaborate and provide value for their customers and stakeholders.

For years, Infrastructure teams have been given the responsibility of enforcing standards, yet they often lack the resources and authority needed to truly empower development teams. This disconnect can affect their ability to deliver meaningful value and support.

What these teams truly seek in Internal Developer Portals is the power to eliminate blockers for developers while upholding standards and ensuring compliance. They strive for increased visibility across the organization, which enables smooth workflows and fosters innovation without the hassle of unnecessary friction.

In the following sections, we’ll explore the significant work these teams have accomplished over the years, the challenges they face, and actionable strategies to overcome them.

Building on solid foundations

In the past decade, we've observed a shift where professionals who previously managed in-house servers and infrastructure have transitioned to similar roles in the Cloud. This change required a transition from simple point-and-click operations and local scripts to remote management using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in a more streamlined and predictable manner. 

For many organizations, this has become the new norm. But why does this matter?

The shift to Cloud and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has compelled teams to reconsider not only their infrastructure but also how these scripts and templates are utilized and their impact on business objectives. Typically, these resources have been made accessible to software developers through various means, such as CI/CD pipelines, command-line interfaces, or sometimes by submitting a ticket to the infrastructure or platform team for execution—commonly referred to as TicketOps. 

While some of these methods are more effective than others, they all share a common foundation established by the organization to standardize best practices and simplify processes. This approach aligns with one of the primary objectives of internal developer portals: to enhance the use of existing tools and practices. 

Therefore, if you have embarked on this journey over the past few years, you are already ahead of many others.

Platform as product

A significant challenge that operations and infrastructure teams have consistently faced is their perception as gatekeepers and a cost center within organizations. Often viewed as a slower part of the operation, these teams have been seen as obstacles to progress and innovation. However, with the right motivation, strategy, and leadership, this narrative can be transformed.

In recent years, there has been a notable shift where many organizations are establishing internal-focused platform teams. These teams aim to deliver Platform as a Product (PaaP), which encapsulates not only the technical infrastructure but also the necessary tools, services, and support that empower teams across the organization. This approach underscores the importance of these teams as enablers of agility and innovation.

This transition is more than just a rebranding; it represents a strategic pivot towards collaboration, efficiency, and innovation. By treating platforms as products, teams can better understand user needs, enhance service delivery, and promote a culture of continuous improvement. This model encourages cross-functional collaboration, allows for faster deployment of solutions, and ultimately drives business success.

The question now is: What does it mean for organizations? It implies embracing a mindset where operations and infrastructure are not merely support functions but integral components that drive business agility, responsiveness to market changes, and innovation.

In practical terms, this approach means treating your platform like any other product within your organization, with the key distinction being that your customers are internal stakeholders. You will engage with these customers to gather requirements, manage the product backlog and roadmap, and develop the necessary tools and resources for their use. Additionally, you will be responsible for ongoing maintenance and ensuring these solutions are effectively adopted over time.

As a result of this shift, platform teams become powerful enablers, enhancing the effectiveness of various teams while promoting consistent standards across the organization. However, just as companies face challenges in encouraging external customers to utilize their offerings, platform engineering teams may encounter similar difficulties in driving adoption of their platforms.

Improving adoption rates

Increasing user adoption of your Internal Developer Portal can be a significant challenge. As noted in this article, many organizations see Backstage adoption stagnating at just 10%.

Adoption is a crucial aspect of the process, extending beyond just Internal Developer Platforms or customer-facing products. You've done it plenty of times before, potentially in smaller settings. Remember that time you had to persuade your team to follow a new way of testing code, or when you led that project that required a complete redesign? These experiences are directly relevant—they just occur on a larger scale when it comes to product adoption.

Now, here’s a strategy that has consistently worked for me, regardless of the context: keep your “customers” engaged and satisfied. How can you achieve that? Build the features they need to make them more effective.

However, it’s essential to remember that you are developing a product, so manage it accordingly. You’ll be interacting with various teams, each with competing priorities and timelines. Therefore, it’s vital to prioritize effectively and deliver frequently, maximizing the value you provide.

If your teams express frustration over a lack of documentation or find that information is scattered across multiple locations - impacting developer onboarding times - start by implementing Service Catalogs. If they struggle with dependencies on other teams for simple tasks like creating cloud resources, focus on enabling Self-Service actions.

We've seen organizations successfully tackle these in different phases, addressing specific problems and working with smaller subsets of teams. Attempting to solve everything at once is likely to lead to failure.

In short, leverage customer feedback to drive your Internal Developer Portal implementation to ensure higher engagement rates. And while you're at it, why not measure its success?

Enforce standards

Maintaining software in production is no small feat. For those tasked with this responsibility, ensuring that best practices are consistently applied across the entire stack can feel like an uphill battle. In many organizations, the burden of service management often falls to a single team, which simplifies oversight but doesn’t reflect the reality for most teams.

Even if you’re part of a dedicated group that manages the full lifecycle of a product, the landscape changes as your organization grows. Onboarding new team members and ramping up deployment frequency can introduce complexity, and without robust best practices in place from the outset, mistakes are inevitable.

This is where Internal Developer Portals come into play. These powerful tools can streamline your processes in several ways. First, they enable Self-Service actions, allowing developers to scaffold new services that incorporate established patterns across the organization. This not only accelerates development but also ensures that all necessary integrations with observability and incident management tools are seamlessly established, along with the infrastructure needed to run your code.

Moreover, Internal Developer Portals facilitate the automated collection of insights from your services and their dependencies, helping you verify that best practices are being adhered to. This data can be visualized in various formats, such as charts showcasing DORA metrics or team scorecards. Such visibility empowers you to monitor compliance with best practices and make informed, data-driven decisions to enhance both your services and team workflows.

Does it sound like Internal Developer Portals could address many of the challenges you’re currently facing? That’s fantastic!

However, it’s important to remember that achieving the right balance is crucial.