Platform Engineering Hype Cycle: Traversing the Trough of Disillusionment

The 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle placed Platform Engineering at the “peak of inflated expectations.” This could foreshadow a rough ride for platform builders, who must navigate the “trough of disillusionment” before they can expect to see productivity. However, all is not lost, as there are emerging practices, technologies, and strategies that have led to the creation of successful platforms over the last decade.
Join Cat Morris, Daniel Bryant, and Abby Bangser as they explore key themes that caused the Gartner team to caution about the challenges ahead. Drawing on Cat’s experience rolling out multiple cloud-native platforms and Daniel’s past life as an analyst, they will offer patterns, processes, and practical approaches to increase the chance of success with your platform engineering efforts.
As a spoiler, it’s all about treating the platform as a product, focusing on automating workflows, and building with an eye for day two operations and scaling.
Key takeaways:
- Overview of platform engineering’s placement on the Gartner Hype Cycle and the challenges for 2024 and beyond
- Discussion on the three key challenges from the analyst and implementer perspectives: enabling developers to ship faster, codifying and sharing organisational policies, and avoiding platform decay.
- Patterns and practical approaches you can apply to your platform-building efforts