Image: © Maximusdn/Stock.adobe.com
BearingPoint’s Karl Byrne explains how organisations can enhance developer productivity and increase development success.
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, chief technology officers (CTOs), chief product officers and enterprise leaders are constantly seeking ways to enhance productivity and accelerate time to market. The success of an organisation is increasingly tied to its ability to innovate and deliver high-quality software quickly.
Two critical components that can significantly impact these outcomes are developer experience (DevEx) and platform engineering. By focusing on these areas, organisations can streamline their development processes, foster innovation and maintain a competitive edge.
DevEx boosts developer productivity, improves software quality and accelerates time to market. Developer efficiency and satisfaction are critical to organisational success. Competition for top software talent highlights this necessity.
Platform engineering significantly boosts DevEx and productivity by providing the necessary infrastructure and tools to support efficient development processes. This empowers developers to concentrate on innovation rather than grappling with infrastructure issues, ensuring timely code delivery.
As a growing enterprise trend, platform engineering is witnessing increased adoption each year. Gartner predicts that by 2026, about 80pc of software engineering organisations will establish platform teams to serve as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.
Investing in platform engineering is not just a technical upgrade; it’s a strategic move to attract and retain top talent, drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge.
DORA metrics play a pivotal role in measuring and enhancing DevEx and DevSecOps performance. Teams such as technical product management and enablement are essential in advancing the developer experience through platform engineering.
What is DevEx and platform engineering?
DevEx refers to the overall experience developers have within an organisation, including the usability of tools, platforms, APIs, workflow efficiency and support. A positive DevEx features streamlined workflows, efficient tools and minimal friction, allowing developers to focus on coding and delivering value. Challenges like fragmented processes and long build times can hinder productivity, manifesting in high pull request cycle times and low unit test coverage.
Platform engineering involves designing and maintaining the foundational systems that support software development and operations. This discipline focuses on creating scalable, reliable and efficient platforms, enabling developers to build, test and deploy applications seamlessly.
Investing in platform engineering reduces operational complexities, enhances system reliability and embeds security practices, ensuring compliance with industry standards.
Internal developer platforms (IDPs) are crucial in modern platform engineering, providing a self-service layer that simplifies infrastructure and operations. IDPs offer a unified interface for accessing development tools, environments, and services, reducing cognitive load and enabling developers to focus on coding and innovation.
They accelerate deployment through self-service capabilities, improve collaboration by integrating various tools and provide predefined workflows to ensure consistency and quality. Additionally, IDPs reduce onboarding time and offer ongoing support to resolve issues efficiently.
Effective platform engineering includes automating infrastructure with infrastructure as code (eg Terraform), streamlining CI/CD processes (eg Jenkins, GitLab), and using monitoring tools (eg Grafana, Prometheus).
It also involves a software catalogue, a developer portal (eg Backstage.io) and API management for creating, securing and monitoring APIs. These components enhance DevEx, leading to more efficient and productive development cycles.
Tying it all together
To measure the effectiveness of a platform, organisations should focus on software delivery and reliability performance metrics. Reliability is ensured through service-level objectives (SLOs), which maintain consistent system functionality via careful design, monitoring and testing.
The industry standard for software delivery metrics are the DORA metrics, which include deployment frequency, lead time for changes, mean time to recover and change failure rate. These metrics help organisations assess and improve their DevSecOps performance.
Additionally, implementing DevEx surveys and customer satisfaction scores can provide qualitative data to enhance developer wellbeing, leading to higher productivity, better code quality and increased job satisfaction.
When go you need a platform?
Adopting a platform can significantly enhance an organisation’s efficiency and success in today’s tech landscape. Here are key scenarios where a platform is beneficial:
Clear and organised information: Service catalogues maintain clear lists of services, making it easy for teams to access and understand available services, preserving critical information and facilitating knowledge transfer.
Increased application complexity: Platforms provide a unified environment that simplifies development, deployment and management, allowing developers to focus on enhancing applications.
Frequent releases: Platforms with automation capabilities and CI/CD integration enable faster and more reliable testing and deployment, ideal for frequent updates.
Resource optimisation: Platforms automate infrastructure provisioning and scaling, optimising resources and reducing costs by paying only for what is used.
Inconsistent environments: Platforms ensure consistency across development, pre-production and production environments through automation, enhancing productivity and speeding up releases.
Security and compliance: Platforms enforce security best practices and coding standards, making it easier to adhere to industry regulations and protect applications from evolving threats.
By addressing these scenarios, platforms can play a pivotal role in improving developer experience and accelerating development cycles.
Implementing DevEx and platform engineering
To successfully enhance DevEx and implement platform engineering, CTOs, CPOs and enterprise leaders should consider the following steps:
Assess current state: Evaluate the existing developer experience and platform capabilities within your organisation. Identify pain points and areas for improvement.
Define goals and metrics: Establish clear objectives for enhancing DevEx and platform engineering. Determine the metrics you will use to measure success, such as developer productivity, time to market and software quality.
Invest in tools and training: Provide developers with the tools they need to succeed and offer ongoing training to keep their skills up to date. This includes modern development environments, automation tools, and CI/CD pipelines.
Foster a supportive culture: Create an environment that encourages collaboration, innovation and continuous improvement.
Monitor and iterate: Continuously monitor the impact of your DevEx and platform engineering initiatives. Gather feedback from developers and make adjustments as needed to ensure ongoing success
Real-world use cases and examples
BearingPoint implemented an IDP for a public sector client undergoing a transformation through platform engineering. The client’s goal was to enhance the software development lifecycle quality and foster innovation by providing developers with better context, thus improving product outcomes. They aimed to facilitate tool collaboration, improve visibility and share knowledge across a growing number of deployable applications.
The solution involved an open-source platform engineering tool offering a unified interface for developers to access essential tools and services. A service catalogue was created, including various applications and technical documents, enabling seamless discovery and utilisation of internal tools. This set-up allowed for code ownership and risk impact analysis by displaying component owners, APIs and team interdependencies.
Integrated tools included source control repository, static application security testing, software bill of materials and CI/CD. A comprehensive dependency map per application was developed, showing interdependencies of deployable components.
Expanded component views displayed quality metrics such as code coverage, third-party security vulnerabilities, licence risks, code quality and unused code. Active monitoring and reporting of missing design documents and other catalogue-related information were also implemented.
By focusing on DevEx and platform Engineering, CTOs, CPOs and enterprise leaders can drive significant improvements in productivity and time to market. These strategies not only enhance the efficiency of development processes but also foster a more innovative and collaborative environment. As technology continues to evolve, staying ahead of the curve with a strong focus on DevEx and platform engineering will be crucial for maintaining a competitive edge.
By Karl Byrne
Karl Byrne is the director and head of software development and delivery at BearingPoint
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
