Our experiences – past and present – shape how we think, work and build. In tech, routines often become ruts. We fall into predictable patterns, following processes that no longer serve us, relying on tools and workflows that were never designed to scale. But just as we must challenge personal assumptions to grow, we also need to challenge how we build and support the teams at the heart of modern software delivery: developers and platform engineers.
In recent years, DevOps emerged as a powerful philosophy, bringing agility and tighter collaboration between development and operations. It revolutionized the speed and quality of software delivery. But despite wide adoption, research repeatedly suggested that organizations were struggling to implement DevOps practices. Why? Persisting issues around fragmented toolchains, siloed teams, shortage of skilled talent, and cultural inertia.
What was needed was not simply a technical transformation but a cultural and operational rethink. And this is where the emerging discipline of platform engineering has stepped in as a game changer. According to Puppet’s most recent 2024 State of DevOps Report, platform engineering has matured significantly, with 43% of organizations reporting that they have been building platform teams for the last 3 years.
The reason is simple: The ability to automate workflows and processes through platform engineering creates standardized processes and improved efficiencies that lead to massively “increased productivity,” “better quality of software,” and “reduced lead time for deployment” for organizations. Critically, it’s able to do this because it’s improving the developer experience (DevX).
Where DevOps once laid the foundation, platform engineering now builds the structure.
Platform Engineering: Closing the DevX Gap by Design
At its core, platform engineering has emerged in direct response to a pressing challenge: the deteriorating experience of developers working in increasingly complex environments. While DevOps helped break down barriers between development and operations, it didn’t fully resolve the daily friction developers face. Tool sprawl, manual setup, inconsistent environments and unclear ownership have all contributed to rising cognitive load and a growing DevX gap.
Platform engineering addresses this challenge by introducing Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) designed explicitly to reduce complexity and empower developers with intuitive, self-service tools. These platforms standardize workflows, abstract infrastructure intricacies, and remove repetitive, low-value tasks from developers’ plates, allowing them to focus on writing code and delivering value.
The goal? To create a developer experience that is seamless, reliable and joyful – akin to the intuitive elegance of using an iPhone, as RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady once put it. But most developers still face a far messier reality: disconnected tools, unreliable environments, and increasing demands to manage the underlying systems they depend on.
Modern development environments resemble a “patchwork quilt” of services and tools that don’t always integrate well. Developers are stuck stitching together systems and troubleshooting broken pipelines instead of innovating. Platform engineering directly targets this dysfunction, not as an evolution of existing methods, but as a fundamental redesign focused on delivering what developers need to thrive.
The DevX Gap is Growing — but Platform Engineering Can Close It
The DevX gap is the space between what developers expect – fast onboarding, reliable pipelines, consistent tooling – and the friction-filled reality of modern software development. Platform engineering closes this gap by shifting from “everyone solves their own problems” to “we solve shared problems once, at the platform level.”
According to a recent Gartner analysis on DevOps and platform engineering trends, organizations that have embraced internal developer platforms (IDPs) and platform engineering principles are seeing measurable benefits, including up to a 50% reduction in developer onboarding time; a 30–40% improvement in developer satisfaction and productivity; and greater consistency and reliability across software delivery pipelines.
These outcomes are being driven not by expanding DevOps headcount, but by enabling teams through centralized, self-service platforms that abstract infrastructure complexity and standardize tooling.
Building a Culture that Prioritizes DevX
To attract and retain top talent, organizations must create environments where developers can thrive. That means:
- Reducing cognitive load: with well-documented, reusable patterns
- Encouraging autonomy: through self-service infrastructure
- Promoting clarity: around ownership and responsibilities
With platform engineering, these outcomes are no longer aspirational – they’re achievable. Start by investing in the foundations:
- A well-architected IDP that serves the needs of developers at every level
- Automation of repeatable processes like environment provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, and testing
- And a shared platform team that is tasked with maintaining and evolving the IDP based on developer feedback
This is how we free up developers from low-value toil and let them focus on innovation, creativity, and impact, because ultimately, developer experience isn’t just a “nice to have,” it’s a clear competitive advantage. Organizations that recognize this and invest in platform engineering are creating the conditions for happier teams and more reliable systems.
DevOps got us part of the way. Platform engineering is the next step, not as a replacement, but as a response to the new priority of making software development a more efficient and sustainable experience. By building bridges between developers and the infrastructure they depend on, we create not just better software, but better places to build it.