Impact
June 9

How to measure ROI and make your platform effect visible

The benefits of platform engineering might be obvious to engineers but are often hard to translate into the language of business leaders. In this talk we examine ways to measure the impact of platform engineering, steps towards defining an ROI, and methods for continuously increasing confidence through visibility. Finally, we outline how to build an ROI platform on top of engineering activities.
Talk abstract

Many scaling and large organisation experience similar pains: High complexity of an existing tool and infrastructure zoo, high cognitive load on engineers to get work done, and slow time-to-market because of bottlenecks in their delivery pipelines. Simplifying and streamlining this into a platform engineering approach seems to be an obvious win. However, it is less clear how to measure the impact of platform engineering on the business and how to cultivate confidence in continuous improvements to justify ongoing investments. 

This talk explores a data-driven approach to engineering effectiveness, how proxy metrics such as DORA or SPACE can bridge some gaps in articulating value, and how to connect those metrics to business impact. Moreover, we explore the idea of “engineering observability” to track effectiveness and continuous improvements for demonstrating the platform's engineering value.