Platform Owners Must Master Platform Optimization to Drive Innovation
Over the past decade, the rise of ServiceNow, Salesforce, and other low-code-no-code (LCNC) platforms are helping companies stay agile, automated, and scalable by easing the burdens of creating enterprise-specific applications. With the application logic already “living in the platform,” developers can focus directly on developing sound business logic. Theoretically, this should shorten the time to market and lower maintenance costs since platforms also handle maintenance.
However, we haven’t yet reached a state where platforms are solving every major challenge in enterprise development. While platforms have shown significant and demonstrable benefits in automating repetitive development tasks and simplifying complex operations, platform owners are still aware of and dealing with several enterprise IT operational challenges.
The Common Challenges in Enterprise Development Haven’t Gone Away
There are a few well-known primary hurdles in optimizing platform operations, and chronic delays in delivering projects on time are often cited as one of the most significant pain points. Delays can be due to many factors, including inefficient deployment practices, slow approval processes, time-intensive manual testing, and cloning downtime.
Issues governing instances in platforms, quality, and security are often ranked as further significant challenges that still exist despite the efficiencies introduced by enterprise platforms. Platforms are only a partial answer to the effects of inconsistent deployment practices that can significantly increase the risk of errors and failures in production environments.
Platforms alone are not enough to solve enterprise development challenges. Companies will only reap the rewards of their platform investment with a good understanding of their limitations and a well-thought-out platform optimization strategy. To truly leverage these platforms, organizations must rewind and ensure they follow development practices and principles akin to the foundations of traditional software development.
Addressing Chronic Delays
Despite adopting platforms, many leading companies still need to catch up on their operations. These delays often stem from inefficient deployment practices, slow approval processes, and extensive manual testing. Fixed release schedules also play a role, as companies waiting for the following change window face limitations on how frequently they can release to production.
Processes like database or instance cloning, essential for maintaining non-production environments, can be incredibly time-consuming. Cloning, which involves copying production data to pre-production environments for testing, can take 10 to 30 hours, causing significant downtime for developers.
Aligning platform engineering teams strategically is crucial in overcoming these hurdles. They must facilitate the shift from fixed release schedules to on-demand releases through improved infrastructure, tools, and CI/CD processes. Automated deployment processes allow companies to push updates frequently, with minimal manual intervention and risk.
Automation and accuracy are also critical in processes like cloning. Platform engineering teams can reduce discrepancies and downtime by streamlining and automating these processes.
Taking Ownership of the Delivery Pipeline and Implementing ‘Accountable Development’
The beauty of low-code-no-code platforms is that they have enabled developers to speed up app development by providing pre-built application logic. However, the danger is that developers use that speed at their peril and overlook governance processes.
Lack of governance shouldn’t just be categorized as a compliance issue or chalked down to bad practices: development leaders must be able to account for the changes made to their platforms and to understand who authorized changes. It only takes a quick reminder of the 2012 $440M software error at Knight Capital to make a case for governance: one human mistake accompanied by poor software engineering practices and lack of ownership was enough to topple the market-maker in less than 24 hours.
Governance has proven a tough nut to crack: many enterprises do not plan to hire specific personnel to maintain delivery pipelines, often assuming cloud services handle these needs automatically. The result is that development teams usually take on this responsibility, integrating it into overall maintenance costs. However, issues arise when admin privileges are too widespread and inconsistently deployed to be consistent with significant governance challenges.
On a positive note, platform engineering teams were invented to address this exact issue, and we’re increasingly seeing them take ownership of the delivery pipeline. They are also introducing tools to optimize automation for governance and deployment processes.
Companies are steadily realizing that standardizing governance as part of the development lifecycle isn’t just good practice: it’s providing platform teams with an extra layer of control and transparency and the appropriate controls to deal with potentially catastrophic human error.
Ensuring Production-Like Environments and Strategic Platform Management
Successful platform engineering beyond standard platforms also involves maintaining non-production environments that closely resemble production settings. This practice mitigates the risk of issues arising in production that were not apparent in development. Companies can reduce the risk of problems arising in production by developing and testing new functionality in production-like environments.
Ultimately, platforms should proactively address enterprise development challenges that affect developers’ productivity. However, with strategic management of platform engineering within modern LCNC platforms, the enterprise development community can meet business demands quickly and without compromising quality and compliance.
In the future, we’re set to see more Platform Engineering and Instance Management tools used as companies recognize their critical role in standardizing the management of enterprise development platforms and their CI/CD pipelines. In combination with a better understanding of the causes of chronic delays and the importance of governance, these tools will help platform owners begin to overcome many persistent challenges while also seeing new efficiencies across their development workflows.
