Your developer platform is a product

You can think of your platform team as a small startup. Your revenue comes from your budget. Your expenses are your team members, plus whatever resources you consume like office space, cloud spend, or vendor tools.

You can think of your developer platform as a product whose job is to balance the three fundamental concerns:

• Products are built with an ideal customer profile (ICP) in mind, and your ICP is your developer end-users.
• Products need to be marketed to build awareness and drive adoption, and you need to teach your developers about your developer platform and make a compelling case on why to use it.
• Products have competitive alternatives, you compete most of all with developers who choose to do it themselves (DIY), and you need to highlight the clear advantages over DIY to end users.
• Products need data to tell you about usage and friction points. You need insight into how your developer platform is being used and where it can be improved.

Finally, product teams stay close to the customer through continual feedback sessions and always learning about what their customer needs. You'll need to do this, too.