The Platform Product Manager Series

Building Successful Platforms

This series focuses initially on Internal Developer Platforms (IdPs), but the principles and approaches are applicable even for external facing platforms.

Who should be interested?

• Engineers working on platform who either a) want to take on the product role; b) want their project to succeed and advocate for the right Product Manager;
• Executives exploring whether they should consider a platform initiative
• Product Managers who want to explore this new, emerging discipline

Ask most engineers whether they need a product manager, they'd say, "No."

That percentage goes way up when the product being built isn't for external users and customers, but for themselves.

Since they know what they want to use, they know what to build.

Although reasonable, this series will make the case that treating the Platform -- in this case, the internal development platform -- as a product can, under the right circumstances, deliver benefits to the entire company.

This means injecting the product management discipline into the platform or infrastructure team.

Here's the first set of articles we'll cover:

1. Why Platform Product Managers Impact Valuations

2. What is the Product Mindset in a Platform Context?

3. How Does a Platform Product Manager Drive Impact?

4. How to Identify Platform Opportunities

5. The Platform as Product "State of the Union" Exercise