FFC NL 2025 TALKS

Why does platform engineering often end in failure? Why did Cheetos cosmetics end in failure? They failed for the same reason - build it and they will come doesn’t work. Platform engineering is the key to improving time to value and total cost of ownership, at scale. And platform as a product is how to make it happen - product thinking applied to platform engineering. But there’s more to it than just hiring a product manager. It's about the platform team having a customer service mindset. It’s about internalising your teams are your customers, your success is entwined with their success, and your job is to help them. I've spent years in platform leadership and advisory roles, in enterprise organisations in the USA and UK. I’ll cover the measures of success for platform engineering, and tell you about some platforms that didn’t work out so well: the one where the ex-infosec lead engineer was made product manager, and the platform team built something so secure that teams couldn’t use it the one where the platform engineers ignored the newly hired product manager, and they spent 6 months on a cloud migration that no team had asked for the one where the product manager advocated a central CI/CD pipeline, the platform team spent 3 months building it, and none of the teams used it I’ll also share some examples of platform engineering done well. And we’ll reflect on a final question: if Frito-Lay can learn that customers don't want to smear orange cheese on their face, why can't we learn that teams won't go faster with clunky handoffs, complex tooling, and a lack of alignment?