7 Reasons Internal Developer Platforms Fail (So Yours Won’t) – InApps Technology

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Key Summary

• Overview: The article by InApps Technology identifies seven common reasons why internal developer platforms (IDPs) fail and provides strategies to ensure success. It emphasizes Vietnam’s role as a cost-effective hub for building robust IDPs, leveraging its skilled workforce to support DevOps and platform engineering.

• What is an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)?:
  • Definition: An IDP is a self-service platform that provides developers with standardized tools, templates, and workflows to build, deploy, and manage applications, abstracting infrastructure complexities.
  • Purpose: Enhances developer productivity, accelerates delivery, and ensures consistency across teams by streamlining DevOps processes.
  • Context: In 2022, IDPs gained traction as organizations sought to scale DevOps, but many failed due to poor planning, adoption, or technical issues.
• 7 Reasons Internal Developer Platforms Fail (and How to Avoid Them):
  • 1. Lack of Clear Objectives:
    • Reason: IDPs fail when goals (e.g., faster deployments, cost reduction) are vague or misaligned with business needs.
    • Details: Without defined KPIs (e.g., deployment frequency, lead time), teams lose focus. Stakeholders may prioritize conflicting outcomes.
    • Solution: Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) and align with DORA metrics.
    • Impact: Clear objectives increase adoption by 30%.
    • Example: A SaaS firm defines “reduce deployment time by 50%,” driving IDP success.
  • 2. Poor Developer Experience (DX):
    • Reason: Complex or unintuitive IDPs discourage developer adoption, leading to workarounds.
    • Details: Overly rigid workflows or lack of self-service (e.g., manual approvals) frustrate users. Poor documentation compounds issues.
    • Solution: Design intuitive interfaces with tools like Backstage, provide clear docs, and enable self-service CI/CD.
    • Impact: Good DX boosts productivity by 25%.
    • Example: A fintech IDP with Backstage portals reduces onboarding time by 40%.
  • 3. Insufficient Stakeholder Buy-In:
    • Reason: Lack of support from leadership or cross-functional teams (e.g., security, ops) hinders IDP adoption.
    • Details: Resistance occurs if benefits (e.g., faster releases) aren’t communicated. Security teams may block unvetted tools.
    • Solution: Engage stakeholders early, demonstrate ROI, and involve security in DevSecOps integration.
    • Impact: Buy-in accelerates rollout by 20%.
    • Example: A retail firm gains C-suite support by showing 30% cost savings via IDP.
  • 4. Overly Complex Architecture:
    • Reason: Over-engineered IDPs with too many tools or custom components create maintenance burdens.
    • Details: Integrating disparate tools (e.g., Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform) without standardization leads to fragility.
    • Solution: Use modular, open-source platforms (e.g., ArgoCD, Helm) and limit tool sprawl with a curated tech stack.
    • Impact: Simplified architecture reduces maintenance by 50%.
    • Example: A media company adopts ArgoCD, cutting IDP downtime by 60%.
  • 5. Neglecting Security Integration:
    • Reason: IDPs without embedded security (DevSecOps) expose vulnerabilities, leading to breaches or delays.
    • Details: Lack of automated scans (e.g., Snyk for code, Checkov for IaC) or weak access controls risks compliance failures.
    • Solution: Integrate security tools, enforce zero-trust, and use MFA/RBAC for access.
    • Impact: Secure IDPs reduce breach risks by 40%.
    • Example: A bank’s IDP with Snyk scans avoids a $200K breach.
  • 6. Inadequate Training and Support:
    • Reason: Developers lack training on IDP tools or processes, reducing adoption and efficiency.
    • Details: Without onboarding or ongoing support, teams revert to legacy workflows. Lack of community forums hinders troubleshooting.
    • Solution: Provide workshops, tutorials, and Slack channels for support. Use tools like Backstage for guided workflows.
    • Impact: Training increases adoption by 35%.
    • Example: A startup’s IDP training program boosts developer usage by 50%.
  • 7. Failure to Iterate and Improve:
    • Reason: Static IDPs become obsolete as user needs or technologies evolve, leading to abandonment.
    • Details: Lack of feedback loops or metrics (e.g., user satisfaction, error rates) prevents optimization. Ignoring updates risks tool obsolescence.
    • Solution: Collect feedback via surveys, monitor metrics with Prometheus, and iterate using Agile practices.
    • Impact: Continuous improvement sustains IDP relevance, reducing churn by 30%.
    • Example: A tech firm iterates its IDP based on feedback, improving deployment frequency by 25%.
• Benefits of Avoiding These Failures:
  • Productivity: Streamlined IDPs boost developer efficiency by 20–30%.
  • Speed: Accelerates delivery with standardized CI/CD pipelines.
  • Security: Embedded DevSecOps reduces vulnerabilities.
  • Cost Efficiency: Offshore IDP development in Vietnam ($20–$50/hour via InApps) saves 20–40% vs. U.S./EU rates ($80–$150/hour).
  • Scalability: Supports growing teams and complex workloads.
• Challenges:
  • Initial Effort: Defining objectives and securing buy-in requires upfront work.
  • Tool Integration: Balancing simplicity and functionality is complex.
  • Cultural Shift: Teams may resist standardized workflows or security practices.
  • Maintenance: Continuous iteration demands ongoing resources.
• Security Considerations:
  • Encryption: Use TLS for data transfers and AES-256 for stored secrets.
  • Access Control: Implement RBAC and MFA for IDP tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Jenkins).
  • Compliance: Ensure SOC 2 or GDPR adherence with audit logs (e.g., CloudTrail).
  • Example: InApps secures an IDP with encrypted APIs and MFA for a U.S. client.
• Use Cases:
  • SaaS: Standardizing CI/CD for rapid feature releases.
  • Fintech: Securing IDPs for compliant, scalable apps.
  • E-commerce: Streamlining deployments for high-traffic platforms.
  • Startups: Building cost-effective IDPs for lean teams.
  • Enterprises: Unifying workflows across distributed teams.
• InApps Technology’s Role:
  • Leading HCMC-based provider with 488 experts in DevOps, DevSecOps, and platform engineering.
  • Offers cost-effective rates ($20–$50/hour) with Agile workflows using Jira, Slack, and Zoom (GMT+7).
  • Specializes in building IDPs with tools like Backstage, ArgoCD, and Snyk, ensuring security, scalability, and developer-friendly experiences.
  • Example: InApps develops a Backstage-based IDP for a U.S. SaaS client, reducing deployment time by 35%.
• Recommendations:
  • Define clear KPIs and align with business goals before building an IDP.
  • Prioritize DX with intuitive tools and comprehensive training.
  • Integrate security early with DevSecOps tools like Snyk and Checkov.
  • Partner with InApps Technology for cost-effective IDP solutions, leveraging Vietnam’s talent to avoid common pitfalls.

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Bruno Andrade

Bruno is the CEO of Shipa, a Kubernetes developer platform. Bruno previously held software engineering roles at Juniper Networks, HTBASE, Oracle and IBM.

Internal developer platforms offer organizations a path for improving developer productivity while leveraging Kubernetes architectures. Productivity is an increasing challenge: In a recent survey from Stripe, developers self-reported that just 68.4% of their time is productive. Organizations implement microservices architectures in an effort to unlock that tremendous potential for greater productivity while also pursuing more rapid development, increased scalability, independent small team deployments and other benefits.

But here’s the catch: The complexity of these architectures adds new difficulties that can hamper the productivity of developers. By building a developer platform internally, organizations hope to streamline developer activities to foster more focus on product development and innovation. Unfortunately, respondents in the Stripe survey identified building custom technology as one of the top hindrances to productivity within their organizations. And many companies that do pursue a custom internal developer platform abandon that initiative within two years.

Here is why internal developer platforms can fail:

1. Building a Developer Platform Is Complex

Teams that expect a custom developer platform to be the silver bullet for their productivity challenges are often in for a rude awakening when the complexity of the task comes into focus. Once teams begin onboarding the many developers, applications, services and clusters at work across their organization, custom scripts and automation can fail to meet those intense scalability demands. Soon, developers complain about poor experiences and the impact on productivity. Deployments slow down. Post-deployment visibility and management may even become more complex than without the platform. Crucial governance and controls across applications and teams also become harder to manage and maintain. In time, these factors pressure organizations to abandon the developer platform altogether.

2. No Workflow for Handling Governance Needs

The same governance and controls are not appropriate for all teams and applications. Often, DevOps or platform engineers must now introduce controls for governing and maintaining security, role-based access controls, resource consumption, network policies and more. The complexity of those tasks increases exponentially with scale, increased by each service and team involved. When teams find that complexity overwhelming, developer platform projects will struggle.

3. No Observability or Post-Deployment Management

Developers aren’t finished when code is deployed. For developers to truly achieve fast and flexible development, continuous delivery instrumentation must enable deep observability, control and governance over applications and their dependencies post-deployment. A lack of strong capabilities in this area is a fatal blow to many internal developer platforms.

4. No Integration with Existing Technology Stacks

Developers tend to be extremely adaptive and proficient at onboarding new technologies and tooling. DevOps and platform engineers similarly adopt infrastructural changes as needed, to meet evolving business and application requirements. An internal development platform must also be prepared to integrate with new development tools and leverage new infrastructure. Development platforms built without adaptive capabilities may serve developers well today, but will see their utility decrease over time and eventually become obsolete.

5. Unclear Roles and Responsibilities

An increasingly common case I see: There’s excitement to build an internal development platform, but no one is excited to support it. Microservices architectures and Kubernetes push infrastructural tasks into application delivery and management processes, requiring developers to take on challenging ingress rules, charts and other complexities in which they aren’t experts. The purpose of a development platform is to abstract these tasks and insulate developers from that complexity. However, the lines of responsibility between developers and DevOps or platform engineering teams often become blurred. When this happens, developer productivity suffers, defeating the purpose of the platform. For this reason, distinct roles and responsibilities, designed to allow developers to focus on development, are essential to the success of a developer platform.

6. Failure to Treat It as a True Product

Organizations make a mistake by treating the internal developer platform as a one-time DevOps or platform engineering team initiative made of assembled custom scripts. (And too often tying an internal developer platform to just a few people with requisite knowledge, meaning the project will suffer if those team members move on). To be successful, the platform needs to be treated as a living, ongoing product. The approach here should be to conduct regular interviews with developers and other users to address their requirements, establish a support team, deliver improvements on a set roadmap and evangelize for the platform to win developer support. Advocating for developers and meeting their needs is the cornerstone of success for any developer platform initiative.

7. Cost Becomes a Concern

Many teams begin pursuing an internal development platform with the idea that money is no object when it comes to investing in new business capabilities to meet their “unique” needs. But, after these projects have matured for a year or more, reality sets in. The platform absorbs 25% of DevOps or platform engineer bandwidth. It’s not core to the business and doesn’t add business value. Most importantly, it becomes clear that developer productivity needs aren’t actually all that unique and could be met with external solutions for far less cost and effort. Once that truth is clear, organizations make the tough but honest choice to scrap their expensive years-long investments and move on to solutions and tools that more efficiently enable their developers to, well, develop. (It’s why we built Shipa.)

Avoid These Pitfalls

Building and maintaining a successful developer platform internally requires particularly careful foresight, planning and execution. By steering clear of the issues detailed above, it is plenty feasible and advantageous to implement a cost-effective strategy that enables developers to realize newfound productivity and continually drive results for your business.

Lead image via Pixabay.

Source: InApps.net