In the early days of platform engineering, success was defined by infrastructure mastery. Got your Kubernetes clusters under control? Check. Built out a self-service internal developer platform (IDP) to reduce friction for devs? Check. But as the discipline matures and expectations evolve, those checkboxes aren’t enough.
Today, the emerging mandate for platform teams is this: Stop thinking like infrastructure engineers and start thinking like product managers.
This isn’t just a trendy mindset shift. It’s a fundamental redefinition of what platform engineering is for. If your internal platform is meant to serve developers, then you’re not building infrastructure — you’re building a product. And that requires a completely different approach.
Why the Shift?
When you manage a platform as a product, you’re no longer just responding to tickets or implementing requirements handed down from on high. You’re responsible for:
- Understanding your users (developers),
- Proactively defining what they need—even when they can’t articulate it themselves,
- Delivering value iteratively,
- And continuously evolving your platform based on feedback and emerging technology.
That’s not the traditional comfort zone for most platform engineers. They’re builders. They want to automate, script, and optimize. They didn’t sign up to be product managers. But here we are — and the stakes are only getting higher.
Platform Engineering’s Evolution
Let’s take a step back. First, platform engineering emerged to tame the complexity of cloud-native and Kubernetes infrastructure. Then, as developer experience (DevEx) gained attention, platform teams began building IDPs to streamline workflows and reduce toil.
Now, the logical next step is to treat that IDP like any other product: With roadmaps, user research, feedback loops and versioning. That’s what “platform as a product” really means.
And yet, many organizations are stuck. They’ve built platforms, sure — but they’re still running them like internal infrastructure projects. No defined ownership. No success metrics. No user interviews. No roadmap. No iteration. Just another internal tool that may or may not get used.
That’s a recipe for wasted effort and frustrated developers.
Challenges of the Product Mindset
Here’s the rub: Shifting to a product mindset is easier said than done.
For one thing, who owns the product? Most platform teams don’t have a product manager. Some don’t even have a tech lead. In many cases, no one is directly responsible for platform adoption, usability, or ROI.
Second, platform engineers often lack — or resist — product skills. Roadmap planning? User research? Prioritizing based on business impact instead of technical interest? That’s a different muscle.
And third, even if the team wants to operate like a product team, they may lack the tools or support to do so. Without buy-in from engineering leadership, the platform is just another internal project.
But ignoring the shift won’t stop it. The best teams are already moving in this direction. And as developer productivity becomes a C-level concern, “platform as a product” will become the baseline, not the exception.
Skills & Tasks for a Product-Centric Platform Team
If your team wants to embrace this shift, here’s what needs to be in your toolbox:
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Core Skills
- Developer Empathy – Understand pain points through interviews, usage data and feedback.
- Roadmap Ownership – Define and evolve a vision for the platform.
- Prioritization – Balance technical debt, feature requests and strategic initiatives.
- Internal Marketing – Promote adoption and communicate value.
- Stakeholder Management – Align with engineering leads, security, compliance and executive sponsors.
- DevEx Metrics – Track and improve key indicators like deployment frequency, lead time and satisfaction.
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Ongoing Tasks
- Conduct internal user research and surveys
- Publish and maintain platform documentation
- Hold “office hours” or feedback sessions with dev teams
- Benchmark platform capabilities against industry tools and trends
- Iterate based on usage data and direct feedback
When Does This Become Critical?
If you’ve launched an IDP and are expecting widespread adoption, this mindset isn’t optional — it’s urgent.
The moment your platform is more than just scripts and YAML is the moment you need to think like a product team. If you want developers to choose your platform—rather than shadow-build their own—you have to earn their trust. That means usability, reliability and constant iteration.
If you’re scaling your engineering org across teams, regions, or business units, the need becomes even more acute. Consistency and ease of use become critical. That’s not just a tech problem — it’s a product one.
Will Platform Engineers Become Product Managers?
Not necessarily. But platform engineers who want to grow their influence will need to speak the language of product. And many organizations will benefit from hiring dedicated Platform Product Managers — a role that bridges engineering, DevEx and business goals.
This isn’t about turning coders into PMs. It’s about recognizing that great internal platforms don’t just exist — they’re built, maintained and evolved by teams who treat them like first-class products.
Final Thoughts
Platform engineering is no longer just about “how.” It’s also about “why” and “for whom.” Internal platforms are products. Developers are your users. And the better you serve them, the more valuable your platform becomes.
So yes — write your Terraform. Automate your provisioning. Monitor your clusters.
But also: define your roadmap. Measure adoption. Interview your users. And ask yourself this:
If our platform were a product we had to sell — would anyone buy it?
If the answer is yes, you’re on the right path.