Platform engineering: fitness plan for developer platforms

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Platform engineering and AI are currently the hottest trends in software development and provision. Many organizations have already started to develop their own platforms – but where they currently stand with their platform, what purpose it should serve and how to achieve this goal are still open questions for many. The Platform Engineering Maturity Model can help to find answers to these questions.

This year's KubeCon EU 2025 in London made it clear just how important the topic of platform engineering is. Not only was there a separate track for platform engineering at the main conference, but the organizing Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) even dedicated an extra day to the topic, the Co-Located Platform Engineering Day.

Although many organizations have already set up their platforms or platform teams, this does not necessarily mean that everything works as desired. As Kubernetes and cloud-native expert Kelsey Hightower so aptly put it last year: “Platform engineering is like a gym membership. Anyone can buy one, but results require actual work.”

As with the gym, the same applies to platform engineering: you don't have to become the next Arnold Schwarzenegger to be successful. For most people, going to the gym is enough to stay fit and healthy. What constitutes a good platform therefore depends first and foremost on your expectations.

What does a healthy platform look like?

How and when is your developer platform good enough? To answer this question, you first need to assess where your platform organization stands and what you expect for the future. To make this easier, the CNCF Platforms Working Group has created the Platform Engineering Maturity Model. This is a maturity model that compares five core aspects of the platform engineering organization (Investment, Adoption, Interfaces, Operations, and Measurement) with four maturity levels (Provisional, Operational, Scalable and Optimizing).

Based on fairly open characteristics and example scenarios, users can assess which maturity level applies to their organization for each core aspect. If users go through the individual aspects of the model and mark the maturity levels whose characteristics or example scenarios most closely match their situation, they get a clearer picture of their current platform maturity.

It should be noted that the different aspects rarely result in a uniform picture of the maturity level. In most cases, individual aspects are already at an advanced level of maturity, while others are still lagging. This is usually because in some organizations, some aspects listed play a more important role than others. Irrespective of this, organizations do not necessarily have to strive to achieve the highest maturity level in every aspect of the Platform Engineering Maturity Model.

As with a bodybuilder in the gym, the highest level of fitness in the Maturity Model can only be achieved with a great deal of effort. This includes both time and financial investment. For small organizations in particular, this can quickly lead to considerable additional expense without delivering any added value. Even for large organizations, the highest level of maturity will probably only be desirable in certain aspects. As already mentioned, this depends on the organization's own context and expectations.

The better approach is therefore not only to document the current state of the developer platform based on the characteristics and example scenarios, but also to define a target picture for each aspect. The deviations can then be used to derive opportunities for improvement. A prioritization of the aspects then provides a concrete roadmap towards the platform that is best suited for your organization.

CloudLand 2025 – das Cloud Native Festival

From July 1 to 4, 2025, interested parties will find a packed line-up with more than 200 highlights at the Cloud Native Festival CloudLand –, including the topic of platform engineering. Visitors can expect a colorful mix of predominantly interactive sessions, hands-on sessions and workshops, accompanied by a comprehensive supporting program that invites active participation.

Spread over up to ten streams, which are characterized by topics from the communities of the cloud hyperscalers AWS, Azure and Google, there are sessions on:

• Cloud-native software engineering
• architecture
• AI & ML
• Data & BI
• DevOps
• Public Cloud
• Security & Compliance
• Organization & Culture
• Sovereign Cloud
• Compute, Storage & Network

Tickets for the festival and accommodation at Heide Park Soltau can be booked via the festival website.