Platform as Product

Internal platforms need product management—treat them like products, not just infrastructure

Camille Fournier
The things engineers are desperate for PMs to understand

Platform as Product

"Platform engineering has to involve software engineering... You should be thinking about how do I create coherent offerings that make this company more productive? So you need software engineers. Yes, you need sort of operations systems, SRE specialists as well. And of course, you need product people." - Camille Fournier

What It Is

Platform as Product is the principle that internal platforms—developer tools, infrastructure, shared services—should be built and managed with the same product discipline as customer-facing products. This means dedicated product managers, impact-based metrics, and a focus on solving real problems for internal customers rather than just keeping systems running.

The common failure mode is treating platform teams as pure infrastructure/operations teams without product thinking. This leads to teams that build what seems technically interesting rather than what actually makes engineers more productive.

How It Works

What platform engineering should NOT be:

  • Just "SRE V2" or operations renamed
  • Pure infrastructure maintenance with small scripts
  • Technology adoption because "everyone on the internet is talking about it"
  • Engineering teams without product counterparts

What platform teams need:

  1. Software engineers - Not just ops/systems engineers, but people who build substantial software products
  2. Operations/SRE specialists - For the operational excellence and scaling work
  3. Product managers - To ensure you're solving real problems and measuring impact

Why product managers matter for platforms:

"The actual details and focus of the product work is just... you can't write a bunch of code and/or manage a big software engineering team and be a product manager at the same time. That's actually just asking, I think, too much of people to do that really well."

Without product managers, platform teams:

  • Build whatever they think is cool
  • Adopt technologies without validating they solve real problems
  • Can't articulate their value to the business
  • Frustrate their internal customers

Impact-based thinking for platforms:

  • Are we reducing cycle time for engineering tasks?
  • Are we solving problems that prevent products from launching and scaling?
  • Are we making meaningful cost reductions or efficiencies?
  • Can we measure our contribution to developer productivity?

How to Apply It

Building a platform team right:

  1. Staff with software engineers, not just ops specialists
  2. Add product managers (ratio can be higher than customer-facing teams)
  3. Define outcome-based goals, not just "keep it running"
  4. Measure impact on developer productivity or business leverage
  5. Treat internal engineers as customers worthy of discovery and feedback

For PMs joining platform teams:

  • Recognize this may be some of the highest-leverage PM work possible
  • Be ready for higher engineer-to-PM ratios (much of the work is deeply technical)
  • Focus on taking successful patterns from application teams and scaling them
  • Don't expect zero-to-one building—platforms often assimilate and improve existing solutions

For companies deciding when to create platform teams:

  • Generally appropriate at 50+ engineers
  • Signs you need it:
    • Same problems being solved redundantly across teams
    • Scaling issues requiring dedicated focus
    • Developer productivity becoming a bottleneck
    • Core systems needing evolution that no product team owns

For people frustrated with platform teams:

If your platform team is slow, unresponsive, or doesn't seem to deliver value:

  • Find the parts that ARE working and invest in those relationships
  • Help product manage them—give clear problem statements and feedback
  • Remember they may not have PM support and need your input

When to Use It

  • When building or restructuring a platform organization
  • When evaluating why a platform team isn't delivering value
  • When deciding if your company needs dedicated platform investment
  • When joining or leading a platform team
  • When product managers question if platform work is "real PM work"

Source

  • Guest: Camille Fournier
  • Episode: "The things engineers are desperate for PMs to understand"
  • Key Discussion: (00:58:17) - How to structure effective platform teams
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

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