TechAni
Platform Engineering Discovery

Treat the platform as a product—and your developers as customers

Assess the maturity of platform vision, developer experience, infrastructure abstraction, and self-service automation. Each section below maps discovery questions to the implementation patterns TechAni delivers in the field.

Platform Vision & Ownership

Gauge strategic clarity, leadership sponsorship, and alignment on what the platform represents within the organization.

Discovery Questions

  • How does your organization define “Platform Engineering”?
  • What business or developer problems is the platform expected to solve?
  • Is there a formal charter or mission statement for the platform team?
  • Who owns the platform roadmap and backlog prioritization?
  • How does leadership measure the platform’s success (adoption, developer satisfaction, lead time, reliability)?
  • Is there executive sponsorship and funding continuity for the platform?
  • Are there competing infrastructure teams or tool owners creating silos?

Evidence to Collect

  • Platform mission or vision artifacts
  • Org charts that show ownership
  • Internal documentation or wikis

Establish Platform Charter & Governance

Create a clear platform mission statement with measurable objectives aligned to business value.

OKRsDORA MetricsTeam Topologies

Implementation Steps

  1. →Define the platform as a product with clear developer personas.
  2. →Establish platform product management with roadmap ownership.
  3. →Create platform success metrics (MTTR, deployment frequency, developer NPS).
  4. →Set up regular stakeholder reviews and feedback loops.
  5. →Document platform principles and architecture decisions.

Platform Team Structure

Organize around enabling teams that reduce cognitive load for stream-aligned teams.

Platform TeamEnabling TeamsDevEx

Implementation Steps

  1. →Platform Core: Infrastructure, compute, networking abstractions.
  2. →Developer Experience: Portals, templates, productivity tooling.
  3. →Platform Security: Policy enforcement, secrets management, guardrails.
  4. →Platform Observability: Monitoring, logging, tracing standards.
  5. →Platform Advocacy: Documentation, training, support channels.

Developer Experience (DevEx)

Discover pain points and opportunities in how developers interact with infrastructure and services.

Discovery Questions

  • How do developers provision environments or deploy apps today?
  • What is the average time from code creation to staging or production?
  • Are there standardized templates or golden paths for services?
  • Do developers manage infrastructure or rely on central operations?
  • Are environment configurations consistent across teams?
  • What friction exists when onboarding a new service?
  • How are secrets, configuration, and credentials managed?
  • Are self-service capabilities documented and supported?
  • How do developers request new infrastructure or pipelines?

Evidence to Collect

  • Onboarding runbooks
  • Workflow demos from idea to production
  • Screenshots of current self-service tooling

Internal Developer Portal (IDP)

Implement a centralized portal for service discovery, provisioning, and lifecycle management.

BackstagePortCortexHumanitec

Implementation Steps

  1. →Deploy an IDP with a software catalog and service templates.
  2. →Integrate with CI/CD, cloud providers, and Kubernetes.
  3. →Create golden paths for common service types (API, worker, scheduled job).
  4. →Add TechDocs for searchable, version-controlled documentation.
  5. →Implement scorecards for service quality and compliance.
  6. →Install operational plugins (PagerDuty, Datadog, GitHub, Terraform Cloud).

Platform CLI & GitOps Workflows

Provide CLI tools and GitOps patterns for consistent infrastructure delivery.

ArgoCDFluxCDCrossplaneCustom CLI

Implementation Steps

  1. →Build a platform CLI with commands for init, deploy, and promote.
  2. →Adopt GitOps with ArgoCD for declarative deployments.
  3. →Provision cloud resources via Crossplane and Kubernetes CRDs.
  4. →Offer Terraform modules for environment-as-code.
  5. →Automate ephemeral environments through pull-request workflows.

Golden Paths & Service Templates

Pre-configured templates that encode best practices and compliance baselines.

CookiecutterBackstage TemplatesOpenTelemetry

Implementation Steps

  1. →Create scaffolds with CI/CD pre-configured.
  2. →Publish hardened Dockerfiles and container policies.
  3. →Ship Kubernetes manifests with health checks and autoscaling.
  4. →Instrument services with OpenTelemetry out of the box.
  5. →Include service mesh configuration and infrastructure modules.

Infrastructure Abstraction & Standardization

Understand how provisioning, security, and networking are abstracted across teams.

Discovery Questions

  • What infrastructure-as-code tools are in use (Terraform, Pulumi, etc.)?
  • Are there reusable modules or blueprints?
  • How consistent are patterns across teams?
  • Is networking managed centrally or delegated?
  • Are naming, tagging, and cost controls enforced programmatically?
  • How is multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructure handled?
  • Are changes peer-reviewed and drift detected?

Evidence to Collect

  • Infrastructure repositories and module structures
  • Policy-as-code configurations (OPA, Sentinel, Kyverno)
  • Change management workflows

Terraform Module Library & Registry

Create a centralized, versioned library of reusable infrastructure modules.

TerraformTerragruntAtlantisTerraform Cloud

Implementation Steps

  1. →Stand up a private Terraform registry.
  2. →Publish composable modules for networking, compute, and data.
  3. →Enforce semantic versioning and changelog discipline.
  4. →Add automated module testing with Terratest.
  5. →Adopt Atlantis or Terraform Cloud for pull-request automation.
  6. →Integrate Infracost for cost estimates during reviews.

Policy as Code & Drift Detection

Enforce governance and detect configuration drift automatically.

OPASentinelConftestCheckov

Implementation Steps

  1. →Define policies for tagging, naming, security groups, and IAM.
  2. →Run Checkov in CI/CD for infrastructure security scanning.
  3. →Leverage Sentinel policies in Terraform Cloud for spending limits.
  4. →Adopt Driftctl or Terraform native drift detection.
  5. →Automate remediation flows for approved drift events.

Control Plane Abstraction (Crossplane)

Manage cloud resources as Kubernetes-native APIs for a unified control plane.

CrossplaneKubernetesAWS/GCP Controllers

Implementation Steps

  1. →Install Crossplane in the platform cluster.
  2. →Define composite resource definitions (XRDs) for common patterns.
  3. →Expose resources to developers via GitOps or kubectl.
  4. →Delegate lifecycle management to Crossplane while enforcing guardrails.
  5. →Standardize RBAC across infrastructure and application teams.

Self-Service & Automation

Assess maturity of automation, portalization, and developer-facing platforms.

Discovery Questions

  • What developer self-service capabilities exist (environments, databases, CI/CD, monitoring)?
  • How do teams discover internal tools and services?
  • Is there a centralized service catalog or developer portal?
  • Can teams provision with minimal human approval?
  • Are platform APIs available for provisioning or observability?
  • How is usage tracked and reported?
  • Do golden paths or reference architectures exist for new workloads?

Evidence to Collect

  • Platform architecture diagrams
  • Portal demos or documentation
  • Provisioning workflows

Service Catalog with Automated Provisioning

Offer pre-approved services with one-click provisioning and lifecycle management.

BackstageHelmCrossplane

Implementation Steps

  1. →Publish catalog entries for databases, caches, storage, and messaging.
  2. →Embed guardrails (encryption, backups, retention policies).
  3. →Provision dashboards and alerts automatically alongside services.
  4. →Provide standard CI/CD pipelines for popular tech stacks.

Platform APIs & SDK

Expose platform capabilities through documented APIs.

RESTGraphQLgRPC

Implementation Steps

  1. →Create APIs for service creation, environment provisioning, and deployment status.
  2. →Secure with OIDC/OAuth and fine-grained RBAC.
  3. →Offer client SDKs and Postman collections for common tasks.

Security, Governance & Compliance

Ensure security and compliance are embedded by design within the platform.

Discovery Questions

  • How are secrets and credentials managed?
  • Are security scans integrated into CI/CD stages?
  • How is access controlled across environments (SSO, RBAC, ABAC)?
  • Are compliance checks automated?
  • Is policy-as-code in place (OPA, Kyverno, Sentinel)?
  • How is platform usage audited and reported?
  • What security exceptions recur most frequently?

Evidence to Collect

  • Security scanning reports
  • Access management policies
  • Audit logs and exception registers

Secrets Management Architecture

Centralize secrets with automated rotation and auditing.

HashiCorp VaultExternal SecretsSOPS

Implementation Steps

  1. →Deploy Vault with HA and auto-unseal.
  2. →Integrate External Secrets Operator with Kubernetes secrets.
  3. →Adopt dynamic secrets for databases and infrastructure.
  4. →Define rotation policies (30/60/90-day cadence).
  5. →Stream audit logs into the SIEM and enforce least privilege.

Shift-Left Security in CI/CD

Automate security scanning across the delivery pipeline.

SnykTrivySonarQubeSemgrep

Implementation Steps

  1. →Pre-commit secrets detection and linting.
  2. →PR-time SAST with SonarQube or Semgrep.
  3. →Dependency scanning with Snyk or Dependabot.
  4. →Container scanning at build time with Trivy or Grype.
  5. →Runtime security with Falco and policy enforcement via OPA/Kyverno.

Zero Trust & Identity Management

Adopt service mesh and workload identity to secure east-west traffic.

IstioOAuth2 ProxySPIFFE/SPIRE

Implementation Steps

  1. →Enable mTLS between services.
  2. →Centralize authn/z with workload identities and short-lived certificates.
  3. →Provide developers with reusable policy templates and reference implementations.

Metrics, Adoption & Feedback

Measure the platform’s impact and gather actionable feedback.

Discovery Questions

  • How is developer satisfaction measured (NPS, surveys, support tickets)?
  • How many teams actively use the platform versus opting out?
  • How is platform usage tracked (telemetry, analytics)?
  • What feedback loops exist (office hours, surveys, roadmaps)?
  • Is there a community of practice for platform engineers?

Evidence to Collect

  • Adoption dashboards
  • Feedback surveys
  • Retrospectives and roadmap reviews

Platform Metrics Dashboard

Track adoption, usage, and developer satisfaction continuously.

GrafanaPrometheusMetabase

Implementation Steps

  1. →Monitor adoption: % of services using platform paths vs. bespoke.
  2. →Track time to first deploy for new services.
  3. →Measure self-service success rate (no-ticket provisioning).
  4. →Run quarterly developer NPS and publish results.
  5. →Track core platform SLOs (uptime, latency, incidents).
  6. →Incorporate FinOps metrics to demonstrate cost efficiency.

Feedback Mechanisms

Create reliable channels for developer input and support.

Implementation Steps

  1. →Weekly platform office hours or Slack huddles.
  2. →Dedicated Slack channel for support and async discussion.
  3. →Quarterly satisfaction surveys and roadmaps.
  4. →Public roadmap with voting/prioritization capabilities.
  5. →Monthly showcases of platform improvements and wins.