Despite its growing adoption, platform engineering is often misunderstood, leading to several prevalent myths. Let’s have a look at some of the most common ones.
Distinguishing Developer Portals from Internal Developer Platforms
Developer portals often emerge organically within individual development teams as a tailored toolchain built with a “you build it, you run it” mindset. These portals primarily aggregate team-specific APIs, documentation and assets. In large organizations with independently functioning engineering teams, this can lead to a proliferation of isolated portals, each adhering to different practices and principles. While these team-built portals might be shared, they often fail to meet the broader needs of other teams, resulting in increased effort, duplicated work (often with minimal differences), and concerns around dependencies on the owning team for changes.
In contrast, an internal developer platform (IDP) offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to automate and simplify day-to-day developer operations (DevOps) through self-service capabilities. A key distinction is that an IDP portal is built and maintained by a dedicated platform team for organization-wide consumption, enforcing unified practices and policies. Beyond APIs, IDPs often provide features extending beyond immediate build needs, such as the ability to provision databases, virtual machines, and accounts – functionalities typically absent in developer portals. Furthermore, IDPs incorporate built-in security policies, standardization, monitoring capabilities and CI/CD pipelines to enhance automation and consistency. According to Google Cloud’s 2024 DORA report, 89% of organizations now report using an internal developer platform.
Those that do experience an 8% increase in individual developer productivity and a 10% improvement in team performance—clear indicators of the strategic value IDPs bring when implemented effectively. Some organizations have also reported a 60% reduction in support tickets, an 80% reduction in security incidents, and a 3x increase in project release velocity, underscoring the transformative impact of IDPs across security, speed and service reliability. Some modern IDPs are even built with multi-cloud strategies and AI-powered orchestration in mind, offering abstractions that support both cloud native and hybrid workloads without sacrificing developer speed or platform control. These capabilities allow teams to manage complex environments with greater confidence and consistency. The value of this unified approach lies in its ability to provide capabilities at scale, reduce redundancy and alleviate time-consuming tasks. Teams can better distinguish between the two by recognizing that developer portals are often team-specific and focused on immediate project needs, while IDPs are organization-wide, centrally managed, and offer a broader range of automated self-service capabilities.
The Bureaucracy and Speed Myth
Another damaging myth is the belief that platform engineering introduces unnecessary bureaucracy and slows down development cycles. This opinion arises from the perception that a unified platform diminishes developer autonomy and creates a bottleneck within the IDP team. When a required capability doesn’t exist within the IDP, the process shifts from a team quickly building a solution in their sandbox with minimal approvals to submitting a feature request that goes through the IDP product owner’s backlog, prioritization, approvals, funding and development, which can take weeks or even months. This contrasts sharply with the days it might take for a team to build a similar tool independently.
However, this perspective often overlooks the long-term efficiency gains that a well-implemented IDP provides. The initial perceived slowdown is a temporary phase during platform setup and adoption. The ultimate goal of platform engineering is to streamline delivery operations, which might be hampered by a lack of resources or funding in the absence of a dedicated platform. The key is to balance standardization with flexibility and ensure efficient processes for feature requests and platform evolution.
Abstraction: A Security Risk or Advantage?
Concerns also surface around the notion that internal platforms might compromise security by abstracting too much from developers. Contrary to this belief, a correctly implemented IDP offers a significant opportunity to strengthen security protocols and enforce standardized practices across all development activities. Instead of limiting developers, a mature IDP integrates security directly into its offerings, ensuring consistent application of best practices. This can include pre-configured secure environments, automated compliance checks and centralized security monitoring. Experience in large enterprises often demonstrates that IDPs enhance security by providing a controlled and auditable environment, rather than hindering it.
Platform Engineering vs. DevOps?
Perhaps the most damaging myth is the notion that “Platform Engineering is a replacement for DevOps, and in some ways a limitation on what developers are able to do.” This fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between the two. In reality, platform engineering can be considered an extension or a practical implementation of DevOps principles. It empowers developers with automated capabilities and self-service tools to provision and manage their environments without constant reliance on operations or network teams for tasks like setting up services or databases. While the initial implementation of an IDP in organizations with mature delivery teams might lead to temporary friction and a decrease in velocity as teams adapt, proper change management can facilitate a smooth transition and a return to previous, or even improved, development speeds.
Communicating Value and Measuring Success
To communicate the true value of platform engineering and dispel these common misconceptions, organizations need to employ strategic communication and track relevant metrics. Proactive communication, starting with broad awareness initiatives and actively engaging influential figures like Project Managers, Scrum Masters and Tech Leads, is crucial for driving adoption and conveying the benefits. These individuals can champion the IDP within their teams and escalate success stories.
Measuring the impact of platform engineering requires focusing on tangible outcomes. A key metric is the reduction in requests to network and operations teams, directly reflecting the efficiency gains achieved through self-service capabilities and the alleviation of repetitive, time-consuming tasks for these teams. Establishing feedback loops is also vital, demonstrating continuous improvement based on developer input and recommendations. Furthermore, showcasing speed-to-scale examples, highlighting how the IDP enables faster delivery of new features and services, can effectively illustrate its value proposition. By focusing on these communication strategies and quantifiable metrics, organizations can move beyond the myths and recognize the transformative potential of platform engineering in accelerating software delivery and enhancing operational excellence.