An internal developer platform (IDP) is a collection of workflows and toolchains that encourage development teams to align their technical infrastructure with their organization’s standards. While an IDP can be as simple as documentation on a wiki, it typically involves smoothing the path for a developer’s work to reach production quickly, safely, and securely and ensuring it runs reliably.
Rather than force a single centralized standard for this technical infrastructure, a platform allows developers to choose from an approved set of options. This strikes a balance between forcing standards on developers, which limits their ability to improve and innovate, and giving them a free choice, which results in a chaotic technical landscape and cost control problems.
An internal developer platform is a product aimed at the organization’s developers. It provides self-service access to technical infrastructure and workflows such as deployment pipelines or cloud hosting resources. By choosing one of the golden pathways offered by the internal developer platform, developers should have an easier way to build and run their software, increasing the time they can spend on feature development.
This removes ticket wait times for requesting environments and infrastructure compared to traditional operations. It also contrasts with the “you build it, you run it” strategy, where development teams are entirely responsible for their software. This strategy increases the cognitive load on developers, and limits flow time when operations tasks and incidents disrupt feature development.
These platforms also allow specialized enhancements to be applied across all teams using golden paths, such as simplifying cost control for cloud infrastructure, increasing automated security checks within the build process, and providing easy access to monitoring tools.
Core components of an IDP
Internal developer platforms typically include components across 5 categories, development, integration and delivery, monitoring and logging, resources, and security.
Development
The development category includes code editors and version control, which are the tools developers interact with the most. These tool choices are often the focus of developer experience (DevEx) initiatives, though the integration and delivery category is the most impactful investment you can make in DevEx as it accelerates software delivery and crucial feedback loops.
The category also includes any developer portal that surfaces self-service operations developers can consume from the tools and workflows in the internal developer platform. These might include one-click setup for new projects or the ability to self-serve environments and transient environments. Developers may interact with the internal developer platform through a user portal or using APIs or configuration files stored in version control.
Integration and delivery
The integrations and delivery category covers the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. While all-in-one tools are on the market, most organizations create a more fully-featured pipeline by using best-in-class tools for builds, test automation, storing artifacts, and automating deployments.
Internal developer platforms can simplify CI/CD pipelines by providing an integrated workflow that meets security, compliance, and change management requirements. Developers can use the pipeline by committing code to version control and spending more time on features rather than configuring their CI/CD pipelines and workflows.
Monitoring and logging
The monitoring and logging category covers the collection, storage, and use of events, logs, and application insights. The platform can make it easier for developers to integrate observability platforms into their applications and services, for example, by providing a library that exposes a simple facade over the selected tools.
The internal developer platform can also apply sensible archiving and retention policies to control the costs of storing large volumes of observability data. Giving developers a self-service way to increase log verbosity temporarily during an incident can keep costs lower during regular operation.
Resources
The resource category includes compute, cluster management, networking, and data. The internal developer platform can provide self-service provisioning and scaling, removing the wait times associated with opening operations tickets. Infrastructure automation removes the manual effort of environment configuration.
Additionally, self-service features allow developers to launch and modify environments on demand, accelerating experimentation and iteration. Standardized templates and automation mean teams can consistently deploy applications, reducing error rates. This allows engineers to focus more on feature development and less on infrastructure issues.
Security
The security category includes secrets management, dedicated security tools, code and container vulnerability scanning, and policy-based controls. These tools can operate in concert with other categories. For example, code scanning is usually included as part of the build process in the CI/CD pipeline.
Including security needs in the internal developer platform reduces developers’ compliance burden and makes software more secure. Opportunities to increase security and improve practices can be amplified as the platform applies them consistently across all development teams using golden paths.
Benefits of an internal developer platform
An internal developer platform that focuses on solving the needs of developers will improve software delivery performance, reduce burnout, and bring standardization benefits to the organization.
Key benefits include:
Accelerated development cycles: IDPs reduce developers’ time setting up and managing infrastructure by providing pre-configured environments and automation. Developers can quickly access resources and focus on building and delivering features, leading to faster iteration and deployment.
Improved collaboration: IDPs centralize tools and processes to create a unified workspace for development teams. This reduces friction between developers and operations teams, fostering better collaboration and smoother workflows.
Enhanced productivity: Self-service capabilities and standardized processes empower developers to manage environments and deployments independently. This reduces the reliance on operations teams and minimizes bottlenecks, significantly boosting productivity.
Consistency and reliability: Standardized templates and automated workflows ensure consistency across environments and deployments. This minimizes errors, reduces configuration drift, and improves the reliability of applications in production.
Cost optimization: Transparency into resource usage provided by IDPs allows teams to monitor and optimize infrastructure costs. Developers can avoid over-provisioning resources and align usage with project needs, ensuring efficient budget use.
Improved application quality: Integrated testing, monitoring, and validation tools within an IDP help maintain high code quality. Teams can catch and resolve issues early in the development lifecycle, leading to more stable and performant applications.
Scalability and flexibility: IDPs simplify scaling applications and environments as organizational needs evolve. Whether scaling up during peak usage or replicating environments for new projects, IDPs streamline the process without adding operational complexity.
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