D2C227: Platforms Reduce Cognitive Overhead

Today’s show explores platform engineering. Guest Chad McElligott has thought a lot about the practice of platform engineering, and a blog post and talk he gave about the subject inspired us to reach out and have a conversation. Chad describes platform engineering as “the application of a Product Mindset to supporting your engineering organization’s software delivery velocity and system stability.” We talk about how to balance the needs of infrastructure engineers and developers, how to shift to a delivery model, and how to account for different human personalities and operational processes in your platform. There’s a tendency to focus on tools, but you also have to consider and incorporate the non-tech stuff. Chad shares his insights on platform engineering from his work on large and small teams. Episode Guest: Chad McElligott | Senior Staff Engineer, Smartrr Chad is an engineering leader currently on the Individual Contributor track. LinkedIn Show Links: How Platform Engineering Works – Chad’s blog post Google Cloud DORA DevOps Capabilities – Google CNCF Platforms White Paper – Cloud Native Computing Foundation Team Topologies book Engineering Enablement podcast InfoQ engineering culture podcast chadxz.dev – Chad’s blog @[email protected] – Chad on Mastodon