Nicolai Ort
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89 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Platform abstractions: Asset or liability"
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weight: 10
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tags:
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- platform
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- cloudnativecon
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---
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{{% button href="https://youtu.be/M5X5NCzlzIA" style="warning" icon="video" %}}Watch talk on YouTube{{% /button %}}
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{{% button href="https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/colocatedeventseu2025/52/atul-talk-platform-engineering-kubecon-london-2025_final.pdf" style="tip" icon="person-chalkboard" %}}Slides{{% /button %}}
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Fair warning: Food analogies incoming
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## Baseline
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### What do abstractions achive
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- Structure through simplification
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- Complexity made simple
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- Hiden Details, visible value
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### Dilemma
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1. Platform team creates abstraction
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2. Abstraction works for 10 Teams
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3. Other team requests extension
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4. Question: How do we deal with this
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### Possible Solutions
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- Add Config Options: Increases complexity of abstraction
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- Make One-off exceptions: Breaks standardization, introduces inconsistency
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- Require conformity: Hinders innovation, creates enemies
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- Allow bypassing: Creates shadow it, risking security and resource control
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=> Debt trap: The cost of maintaining a stable platform rises and rises
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## The debt cycle
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### The abstraction cycle
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1. Simplify
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2. Adobt
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3. New Requirements
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4. Add complexity
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5. Repeat
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### Warning signs
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- Rizing customization requests
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- Workarounds
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- Shadow IT
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### Impact
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- Each new feature becomes harder to implement
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- Teams lose trust in the platform capabilities
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- Platform evolutions slows down
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- New tech is difficult to incorporate
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## Abstraction elacity
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> The abstraction should stretch a bit to accommodate change without brakuing
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- Adaptability: Ease of handling new requirements
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- Transparency: Understand what your user wants and why
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- Extension PAtterns: Document ways to customize the platform behavior
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- Migration Paths: Ease of moving away from the platform abstraction
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### Elasticity
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- Can teams access lower level controls (when needed) while staying with the abstraction
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- Do users understand what happens underneath (when needed)
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- Are ther documented extension/customization points?
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## Patterns to break the debt trap
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- Layered abstraction patterns: start with low-level abstractions that get abstracted on higher levels to allow users to choose the right abstraction level for themselves without having to configure everything themselfes
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- Expert-ap: Additional api parameters that are not needed but can be set
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- Policy based guard rails: Change the guardrails based on the environment (e.g. deep access in dev, not in prod)
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## The end goal
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- Increase adoption
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- Eliminate shadow IT
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- Improved satisfaction
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- Reduced overhead |