Platform Strategy: Innovation Through Harmonization (Architect Elevator Book Series)

Almost every IT strategy these days includes some element of platform strategy. And that’s no surprise. Platforms appear to be able to rewrite the laws of IT physics: they boost innovation despite (or perhaps due to) standardizing; they speed up developers while assuring compliance; and they reduce cognitive load without restricting choice. As one might guess, building such an in-house platform, or even deploying one, is far from easy. Many organizations looking to harvest the power of platforms end up with something that’s outdated by the time it’s launched, restricts rather than enables users, and faces a certain demise when its use is mandated in a last-ditch effort to make the economics work. Harvested from a decade of building successful in-house platforms and enabling enterprises to utilize cloud platforms, this book provides a fresh look at what makes IT platforms work, why they are different from other IT services, and how you can use them to boost developer productivity. Sticky metaphors (“are you building a fruit salad or fruit basket?”; “is your platform sinking or floating?”; “build abstractions not illusions!”) provide actionable design guidance without being lecturing or boring. As part of the Architect Elevator series, the book takes IT executives, IT architects, and developers through the different levels of a platform journey, beginning with delineating types of platforms, detailing the core characteristics of IT platforms, and explaining necessary design trade-offs, before discussing how to grow internal platform usage and setting up in-house platform teams. eBook Readers: The eBook is currently available from Leanpub. Leanpub EPUB files easily load onto Kindle apps and devices with all the same features. Buy with confidence: A free PDF sample for download is also available on Leanpub.