{"id":14570,"date":"2024-08-06T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ee.yelkdev.site\/?p=14570"},"modified":"2024-12-09T21:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T21:00:55","slug":"how-to-overcome-technology-anarchy-with-aligned-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equalexperts.com\/blog\/our-thinking\/how-to-overcome-technology-anarchy-with-aligned-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"How to overcome technology anarchy with aligned autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Platform engineering means creating user-centric capabilities that enable teams to achieve their business outcomes faster than ever before. At Equal Experts, we\u2019ve been doing platform engineering for over a decade, and we know it can be an effective solution to many scaling problems.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s easy to get platform engineering wrong. In this series, I\u2019m covering some of its pitfalls. Last time it was the power tools problem<\/a>, and today it\u2019s the technology anarchy problem<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Alignment and autonomy are needed<\/h2>\n

Teams need alignment and autonomy in product and technology to succeed at scale. Alignment connects vision, strategy, and execution, while autonomy empowers teams to act independently. Increasing alignment means better decisions, and increasing autonomy means faster decisions. Here\u2019s a 2×2 from our alignment and autonomy 101<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"A\n

Platform capabilities are a great way to share technical alignment with your teams. Baking alignment into capabilities such as deployment pipelines and observability dashboards makes engineering tasks much easier for teams. You might know this as an opinionated platform, paved roads, or golden paths. But when alignment is absent the magic doesn\u2019t happen and your teams are in anarchy.<\/p>\n

The long-term costs of technology anarchy<\/h2>\n

When your platform capabilities offer autonomy without alignment, your teams can\u00a0 quickly make technology decisions, but without guidance. In the short term, this allows teams to use familiar tech stacks to rapidly build services and deliver them to customers. However, in the long-term, it creates a fragmented ecosystem full of inefficiencies, staffing challenges, and a maintenance mountain.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve previously described how to measure capabilities in internal customer value, internal customer costs, and platform costs. Here\u2019s a v1 platform that lacks technical alignment with three teams building their own pipelines in different tech stacks. There\u2019s some internal customer value, and low platform costs as the platform team doesn\u2019t have to build much. But internal customer costs will skyrocket over time.<\/p>\n\"Different\n

This pitfall occurs when these interconnected, incorrect beliefs exist in your organization:<\/p>\n