Multi-Persona Platforms Expand the Audience
Multi-persona platforms are becoming a defining requirement for Platform Engineering 2.0. In episode three of The Platform Engineering Show, Alan Shimel and Pankaj Gupta of Broadcom discuss why platforms can no longer serve only application developers and platform engineers.
Gupta explains that Platform Engineering 1.0 focused heavily on developer productivity. Internal developer platforms helped developers reduce cognitive load, use self-service environments and move code toward production more efficiently. That remains important, but it is no longer enough.
More Teams Need the Platform
Platform Engineering 2.0 expands the platform audience to include data scientists, machine learning engineers, security teams, compliance teams, SREs, DevOps engineers and business leaders. Each group needs a different experience layer, abstraction model and set of controls.
Multi-persona platforms must support those needs without creating a separate toolchain for every team. The goal is to avoid a fragmented Tower of Babel where each function builds its own platform. A shared platform can provide consistency while still adapting to each persona’s workflow.
AI Agents Add Non-Human Users
The conversation also highlights the rise of non-human personas. AI agents are becoming active participants in software delivery. They may write code, trigger workflows, run tests or interact with platform APIs in ways that once belonged only to human users.
That shift creates new requirements for permissions, guardrails and accountability. AI agents need access to platform capabilities, but they also need clear limits. Platform teams must know which actions require human approval and which can safely run through policy-driven automation.
Platform ROI Needs a Broader View
The episode also questions whether traditional developer-centric metrics are enough. DORA metrics remain useful, but platform value increasingly depends on security, compliance, operational resilience and business alignment.
For enterprise leaders, the takeaway is direct. Multi-persona platforms will help organizations scale Platform Engineering 2.0 beyond developer productivity. The next generation of platforms must serve humans and AI agents through governed, role-aware and enterprise-ready experiences.