The most effective internal platforms deliver self-service, security, and observability out of the box, but their real differentiator is product thinking.
Treating platforms as internal products — with clear ownership, feedback loops, and iteration — is what turns shared infrastructure into a true force multiplier for development teams.
Donnie Page, Itential solutions engineer, says the difference between a platform built as a product and one built as shared infrastructure comes down to the operational model.
“Shared infrastructure functions as a cost center focused on ‘keeping the lights on’ via reactive, ticket-driven workflows. In contrast, a platform product is a value-driven environment,” he says.
It uses defined standards and guardrails to create a self-service “Golden Path,” empowering developers to provision what they need immediately without human intervention.
Dmitry Chuyko, performance architect at BellSoft, highlights the differentiators: Clear responsibility and governance.
“A platform-as-product has defined ownership, roadmaps, and accountability,” he says. “Shared infrastructure often just accumulates features without anyone truly owning the outcome.”
Chuyko explains that the payoff is the speed of change: Product platforms can evolve rapidly.
“What it looks like today might be completely different tomorrow without disrupting development workflows,” he says. “That’s because changes are managed deliberately with user needs in mind, not just thrown over the wall.”
With shared infrastructure, by contrast, changes are risky because nobody owns the full picture: Teams become afraid to touch it, and it becomes legacy even as it remains current.
Dedicated Ownership Critical to Success
Just like any other product, platforms need ownership to succeed. Without it, they evolve based on developer assumptions or management mandates–neither works well.
“Product ownership means the platform evolves based on actual user pain points and prioritized roadmaps, not guesses about what developers might need or top-down directives about what features to build,” Chuyko says.
Page adds dedicated product ownership acts as a safeguard against the “build it and they will come” mentality.
“It ensures the roadmap is not driven by technical assumptions, but by business value,” he explains.
A dedicated owner prioritizes features that directly improve developer velocity and accelerate time-to-value for service delivery, ensuring the platform solves actual user problems.
Gathering, Prioritizing Feedback
Common mechanisms for gathering and prioritizing feedback from developer users include sprint planning sessions where developers voice needs, planning poker or similar estimation exercises to prioritize features based on effort and impact, user interviews, or structured feedback channels.
“Some organizations run planning games where teams compete for platform resources,” Chuyko says. “Some teams use all of these; others pick what fits their culture.”
From his perspective, the method matters less than making it deliberate.
“Feedback and prioritization should be part of your product management process, not ad-hoc responses to whoever complains loudest in Slack,” Chuyko says.
Page says feedback must be proactive and research-based, rather than relying solely on reactive support tickets or incident reports.
Best practice involves a continuous feedback loop: Partnering with developers on early-stage requests and “edge case” requirements.
“This direct engagement allows the platform team to fully understand the impact of potential changes or new standards before implementation,” he says.
Long-Term Evolution
Chuyko explains that product thinking makes funding and staffing transparent instead of hidden, shady costs, and enables proactive evolution.
“Features can become available to many platform consumers before they even request them, because product owners anticipate needs,” he says.
At the same time, certain features or practices become obsolete naturally. Supply chain tasks are a good example of this continuous refinement.
“Most importantly, migrations become manageable,” he says. “Moving from one platform generation to another follows a clear path.”
That’s compared to migrating between ad-hoc shared infrastructure setups, where every transition is custom and painful because nothing was designed with evolution in mind.
Page says product thinking shifts the primary objective from “stability at all costs” to “sustainable velocity”.
Instead of stagnating, the platform becomes a learning system that evolves based on developer research, market trends, and past failures.
“This transforms the platform from a depreciating asset into a value-driven ecosystem that grows alongside the business,” he says.