Most development teams have experienced the productivity gains of adopting DevSecOps methodologies, along with the corresponding tools and processes. Recent research has found that C-level executives identified faster iteration, better code quality, improved operational efficiency and more secure applications as the top benefits of implementing DevSecOps.
As DevSecOps adoption grows, many organizations aim to capture this momentum and identify opportunities to improve developer productivity and efficiency without sacrificing software quality or security. One valuable step in capitalizing on these productivity gains is to incorporate platform engineering into development workflows.
Platform engineering is the practice of implementing a customized, unified infrastructure to route DevSecOps teams through self-service systems and workflows. Platform engineers possess a broad set of skills, including experience with automation, infrastructure as code, cloud deployments, Kubernetes and secure coding practices. They work closely with the DevSecOps team to tailor the platform to the organization’s specific needs.
Building platform engineering practices into existing DevSecOps workflows can enhance developer productivity and satisfaction by standardizing best practices, tools and architectural patterns. Platform engineering can alleviate some of the burdens that the shift left movement has placed on developers while ensuring consistent application of security measures, accelerating time to market and maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.
Improving Efficiency and Productivity
Platform engineering ensures that developers can spend their time delivering value through coding, testing and reviews rather than tooling and setting up application environments. It also allows teams to optimize software delivery by identifying efficiency gaps, comparing performance across teams and sharing best practices.
By streamlining workflows, teams can increase development velocity, reduce repetitive manual tasks to focus on more valuable work and minimize human error with automation. Teams can achieve these benefits by:
- Customizing monitoring tools to determine when and why bottlenecks occur
- Incorporating pipeline efficiencies, such as custom code related to an organization’s infrastructure or a specific application
- Customizing tools, such as automation scripts for CI, to meet the organization’s specific needs
Maintaining Secure and Compliant Workflows
Teams can also use platform engineering to incorporate security policies and best practices across the organization. Organizations can ensure regulatory compliance and manage policies to maintain software quality and integrity by implementing granular user roles and flexible permissions with the least privileged access.
Platform engineering principles can codify training, policies and checks and balances, making the process of building secure software more efficient and consistent. For example, teams can configure security and compliance policies to ensure that scans run at specific times or stages in the development process, set up checks and balances for regulation enforcement and conduct regular security audits.
Facilitating Collaboration and Removing Silos
DevSecOps workflows should facilitate collaboration between developers, operators and security teams. Platform engineering can strengthen this effort and give team members more time and resources to work together. Teams can work toward a more collaborative culture by innersourcing and reusing code, breaking down silos to improve collaboration and creating flexible pipelines that scale quickly.
Some ways to incorporate these principles include:
- Creating pre-built workflows to make building CI configurations easier
- Documenting and enforcing organizational best practices
- Setting up and customizing platform templates to standardize pipelines
- Ensuring that all teams have access to critical tools, such as vulnerability scanning and access management, which can help drive their workflows
DevSecOps and platform engineering are adjacent concepts with the shared goal of empowering developers and improving both efficiency and security. A DevSecOps platform can serve as a framework for platform engineering, while platform engineering can optimize DevSecOps tools.
Platform engineering is a valuable and complementary partner to DevSecOps. By consolidating and standardizing tools and workflows, organizations can create faster, more scalable and repeatable software delivery processes. The effort requires a cultural shift in addition to a product- and tool-led approach, but the payoff can be transformative.