Where Are We Headed Next? A Platform Engineering Roadmap

What does the platform engineering roadmap look like as we head into its continued maturity? We recently conducted a survey to better understand the role and state of platform engineering — emphasizing those organizations who are using this tactic to greater success. Using this data, we will peek into the future and see where platform engineering is headed next. 

Table Of Contents: 

• Where is the Platform Engineering Roadmap Headed? 
• What Does Platform Engineering Solve? 
• The State of Platform Engineering Today 
• Platform Engineering Roadmap Future-State 

Where is the Platform Engineering Roadmap Headed? 

From our survey, the platform engineering roadmap appears to be taking us toward the creation of multiple platforms to serve specific functions, mature adoption, and an increased focus on security in the coming years. 

To build the 2024 State of DevOps Report, we conducted a survey of professionals working within relevant roles on teams like IT operations, software development, and security ops — and across industries like government, technology, and financial services. This survey was backed by an independent panel organization to verify the accuracy of our results. 

From this data, we gathered some key information about the current state of platform engineering, and how successful teams are putting platform engineering to work. 

From this information, a general shape of the roadmap begins to appear. We can see the direction that organizations are taking, where they are expanding functions, and where they are dedicating resources. We’ll look at a few of these at a high-level here, to make some predictions about the next phase of platform engineering adoption and use. 

What Does Platform Engineering Solve? 

Platform engineering solves team enablement, by allowing teams to work faster and more efficiently through tactics like self-service and automation. 

Looking at the data from our survey, there are three top use cases for platform engineering: 

• Increased Productivity — The original aim of platform engineering is to build tools and workflows that enable self-service during software development. Increased productivity is unsurprising when considering its foundational goal. 
• Automated and Standardized Processes — Automating workflows and ensuring the right people are using the right tools adds value to organizations who seek standardization across teams. 
• Increased Speed of Product Delivery — The freedom from time-consuming menial tasks means that developers can focus on the processes and projects that deliver value faster. 

The effectiveness of platform engineering is one of the reasons that most functionalities have mostly moved onto a platform of their own. As an example, 55% of security functionalities reported moving to their own platform, with an additional 20% indicating that they will move soon per our 2023 survey.

Why? 

If platform engineering didn’t support the top cited use cases, it would not be spreading across organizations the way we’ve seen. Enabling teams to do better work, and faster work, is the goal. 

The State of Platform Engineering Today 

Platform engineering is no longer in an early stage of advancement — most organizations have had a platform team for at least three years: 

The number of self-service platforms have also increased, with most respondents reporting that they have 3 total, and a few outliers reporting 10. A broadened scope of platform engineering has created a need to expand to meet need. 

These expanded platforms include a broad scope of work, with the top tasks including: 

• Services that enable app dev teams to build, deploy, and run their apps 
• Provisioning and managing infrastructure to support product teams 
• Automating workflows and processes 
• Access control 

Putting platforms to work in more specific ways corrects problems that happen when you over-centralize, forcing people to take on tasks that they might not want or don’t have the right training for. This is why respondents shared that platform engineering consistently provided value and was perceived as “worth the investment.” 

It’s also important to touch on a trend that we will explore in our next section, which is the proactive implementation of security practices across platform engineering. From our data, platform engineering teams have become responsible for both putting out security fires and building and enforcing security processes. 

From an idea in its infancy to an average of a three-year adoption across organizations, where do we believe that platform engineering is headed next? 

Platform Engineering Roadmap Future-State 

Looking past the individual responses in our survey, we drew a few important conclusions about the platform engineering future state: 

• Expanded Scope — With functions like compliance and security moved or planning to move into a platform of their own, we see platform engineering broadening its reach to include a wider scope of teams and use cases. 
• A Harmonious Balance — A vast majority of survey responses indicated that they continue to invest in the platform engineering team, and that it adds value to their org through a deep understanding of an organization’s intricate functions. Platform engineering teams offer balance, using the skillset of a full-stack DevOps engineer with a strong knowledge of system integration. This investment will continue, and why wouldn’t it? If a platform team adds skilled balance to other teams, organizations will keep the ball rolling. 
• Security as a Key Deliverable — Most of our respondents shared that built-in security and compliance is delivered via a self-service platform, and we don’t see this trend stopping. Respondents also shared that their platform team ensures that people are using the correct version of software/IT tools and that they also enforce specific benchmarks. With an emphasis on automation, and the right tools to support compliance enforcement, we see this trend growing and expanding in future. 

If you want to understand the full story around platform engineering, including additional context around the data we’ve shared here, don’t miss the 2024 State of DevOps: Platform Engineering Edition report, launching on March 19, 2024.

In it, you’ll learn how we used survey data to draw conclusions about platform engineering across different teams and industries. Even better, it’s a free: 

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