The Real Cost of Missing Platform Engineering Teams

In the tech world, too often platform engineering teams are viewed as simply, "nice to have". Sometimes the function isn't considered or we just get too heads down in our daily work that we don't see the pain their absence may be causing. I've recently been dealing with a real-world challenge that inspired me to put my thoughts down on this subject. In this post, I want to discuss why dedicated platform teams are crucial to our organizational success and outline the real, hidden cost of not implementing them.

The Current State

My organization utilizes Kafka extensively. We have been heavy users for years now with the culture of Kafka deep amongst most of our engineering teams. Unfortunately, we didn't start with a schema registry - we were traditionally in a very startup type feel and just wanted to ship. So now, years later, we're seeing the pains and have decided it's time to implement a schema registry. I won't get into the details of that here, but what's important is we made this decision over a year ago. So why haven't we made any progress? It is becoming increasingly apparent that without a dedicated platform team, we're forced to rely on individual product teams with competing priorities to fill that gap.

This approach creates several significant challenges. Product teams must handle technology aspects that interfere with their primary responsibility - delivering specific value to their customers. We have to identify a team willing to take on the responsibilities of implementing new tech:

• Initial investigation and learning
• Testing and validation
• Documentation
• Production readiness
• Ongoing support and maintenance

The Hidden Costs

Unfortunately, this organizational pattern carries substantial costs that often go unrecognized:

Delayed Adoption

Without dedicated resources, technical initiatives move slower than necessary. Teams will be hesitant to volunteer for platform work, knowing how it will impact their primary responsibilities.

Inconsistent Implementation

A specific team focusing on a broader technology need won't always have the correct scope for what they are creating. Just because it works for them doesn't mean it will meet other teams' needs.

Reduced Innovation

Teams become hesitant to propose or adopt new technologies with the fear that implementation and adoption burden will fall to them.

Resource Strain

And if a team does volunteer to take on the responsibility, they would essentially perform double duty by maintaining their primary responsibilities while owning ongoing support for broader technical needs.

The Platform Team Alternative

A dedicated platform team would fundamentally change this dynamic. They:

1. Focus exclusively on organizational technology capabilities
2. Build with a comprehensive view of different teams' needs - a different type of customer!
3. Create standardized, well-documented solutions that can easily be adopted by others
4. Provide dedicated support for adoption, even going as far as temporarily embedding with teams to ensure proper adoption as necessary
5. Maintain and evolve platform capabilities and removing the burden from the product teams

Real Use Case Impact: The Schema Registry Example

Our schema registry implementation illustrates these challenges perfectly. Despite having the technology available and broad recognition on its need and value, we're struggling with getting it off the ground for various reasons:

• No team has been eager to tackle the work knowing their product commitments
• We need organization-wide standards for schema design and management, validation of tooling, and more
• The implementation requires careful consideration of multiple teams' use cases which requires additional time commitment to uncover
• We need dedicated resources for documentation and training - the implementation has to be scalable and repeatable

A platform team would handle this as their primary responsibility, not as an additional burden on top of existing commitments.

Moving Forward

We should recognize when we reach the need the platform engineering by identifying the hidden costs associated with not having that function. It's critical in that it:

• Accelerates technology adoption
• Ensures consistent implementation of organizational standards
• Reduces burden on product teams
• Improves overall technology quality
• Enables faster innovation

Implementation Considerations

When establishing a platform team, there are some key factors to consider:

1. Define clear ownership boundaries
2. Establish service-level objectives
3. Create explicit interaction models with product teams
4. Build feedback loops for continuous improvement
5. Measure and communicate platform impact

Final Thoughts

The cost of not having a platform team isn't just technical - it's organizational. It manifests in slower delivery, inconsistent implementations, and frustrated teams. As organizations scale, the platform team becomes increasingly critical for maintaining technical consistency and enabling rapid innovation.

I'd love to get your thoughts, especially any other real world experiences. Feel free to leave comments!