There’s a growing conversation in engineering circles about ‘Platform Engineering,’ and if you’re a PM, it deserves your full attention. Think of it as the evolution of DevOps, focused on creating an internal paved road for developers to ship code faster, more securely, and with less friction.
So why should product managers care? Because the developer experience at your company is a direct bottleneck—or accelerator—for your product roadmap. When engineers can self-serve infrastructure, run tests effortlessly, and deploy with confidence, they spend less time on toil and more time building the features you’ve prioritized. A strong internal platform is a strategic advantage that directly impacts your time-to-market.
The most effective tech organizations treat their internal platform as a product, with engineers as the customers. This requires product thinking: understanding developer pain points, prioritizing platform features that unlock the most value, and defining success metrics like deployment frequency or developer satisfaction. Getting this right requires a deep understanding of your engineering team’s workflows. We’ve seen teams use tools like Leera (https://leera.io) to gather continuous, async feedback from their dev teams, treating platform development just like any other user-centric product.
This isn’t just an engineering-led initiative; it’s a core component of building a high-performing product development organization.
How involved are PMs in your organization with internal platform or developer experience initiatives, and how do you measure their success?