As product managers, we’re hardwired to obsess over the end-user. We live and breathe their problems, journeys, and feedback. But what if I told you that one of the biggest levers for improving your product is focusing on an internal user: your developers?
This is the core idea behind the rise of Platform Engineering. It’s about treating your internal development infrastructure—the tools, workflows, and services engineers use every day—as a product in its own right. The goal is to create a seamless “paved road” that reduces cognitive load and removes friction, enabling development teams to ship high-quality features faster and more reliably.
When developers are wrestling with clunky CI/CD pipelines, inconsistent environments, or confusing documentation, that’s time and energy not being spent on customer-facing innovation. By applying product thinking to the developer experience (DevEx), we can directly impact team velocity, morale, and our ability to experiment. This isn’t just an ‘engineering problem’; it’s a strategic enabler for the entire product organization.
How involved are product managers in your organization with internal developer platforms and tools?