Internal Developer Portal - Centralize all developer needs
A platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which other applications, processes or technologies are developed.
That said, the common aspects in everything that a platform team does are:
Enabling developer self-service across the organization Keeping systems reliable and maintanable Ensuring that developers' experience of working with the infrastructure is not compromised Platforms are a great way to streamline development workflows, since they enforce common company standards, ways of working, and best practices that ensures that everyone is moving in the same direction.
By doing this, platforms abstract away complexity and toil, allowing your teams to concentrate on solving real business problems and makes it easy for your teams to build, deploy and operate products. This, in turn, will allow your organization to accelerate its time to market, increase revenue, reduce costs and create innovative products for your customers.
Since platforms reduce all these complexities, the workers will become happier as their cognitive load lower. Platforms abstract away the usual infrastructure concerns, which leads to reduced onboarding times for new joiners, a mover between teams, a leaver or the onboarding of a new development team. It will also become easier to attract new talent as your organization will have time to stay up to date on technology, which will encourage talented engineers to join your organization and which will create more recruitment options.
Concentrating specialized skills in platform teams means recruitment efforts for development teams can focus on developers, testers, etc., without requiring more costly, specialized cloud or platform skills.
Capabilities
Internal Developer Portals are supported by platform engineering teams and act as a central hub for developers to find information and resources easily. Developer portals are an important way in which platform engineers help provide a good developer experience. Centralize all developer needs, such as:
- Documentation: Avoid time consuming searches by centralizing all the docs in your org.
- Standard development tools: Provide your battle tested tools that makes developers day easier.
- Development best practices: Enforce code compliance through your best practices.
- Knowledge base: Make it easy for your developers to share their organization specific knowledge.
Examples
Backstage
It is an open platform for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, it restores order to your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy.
Backstage unifies all your infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation to create a streamlined development environment from end to end.
Conclusion
Platforms play a crucial role in streamlining development workflows and enabling developer self-service across an organization. By abstracting away complexity and standardizing processes, platforms ensure that everyone is working in the same direction, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity. Platforms also reduce cognitive load for workers, leading to happier employees and faster onboarding times for new team members.
Internal developer portals, supported by platform engineering teams, serve as central hubs for developers, providing access to documentation, development tools, best practices, and knowledge sharing.
Examples of platforms like Backstage demonstrate how a centralized software catalog can enhance productivity and enable high-quality code delivery while maintaining autonomy. Overall, adopting platforms can accelerate time to market, increase revenue, reduce costs, and foster innovation within an organization.