But what does improving the platform really mean?

It is too broad of an avenue to chase after and what we need here is direction and focus. To help answer this, start with these three simple questions

We should know why we are doing what we are doing and the impact it brings to our developers. Now ruthlessly prioritize our short-term goals and activities so that they support our long-term vision.

Always be asking “Is this absolutely necessary to...

“How do we operate?”

We now define our core values and operating principles that help set the right culture and mindset in our team.

What are our key focus areas?

With this, we list down key goals that help achieve our overarching mission. These goals help provide much needed focus, that in turn translates to identifying the right avenues to tackle.

Define best practices and architectural guidelines . Advocate and enforce them via tooling, reviews, documentation. Provide coaching, participate in slack discussions and help engineers deliver high quality code.

The platform we build is our product and teams we support are our users. We collaborate like an Internal Open Source (aka Inner source) Team. We do not want any one person or team making decisions on how we solve problems for all teams. The key is to share your plan with teammate...

Whenever we identify promising approaches to any problem, it’s encouraged to try them out through POCs, review results afterwards and make choices accordingly. Key features should always be AB tested and analyzed before complete rollout.