Platform Engineering
How Platform Teams Can Win Buy-In: Speak to Business Goals, Not Features
Engineers at a company revealed how they convinced reluctant developers and executives to adopt their internal platform by focusing on emotions and business metrics rather than technical superiority.
InfoQ
Lucas Hornung and Christian Matthaei, engineers at a firm with an internal platform team, shared hard-won lessons at KubeCon Europe on winning organizational buy-in for developer tools. Their core insight: most platform adoption failures stem not from technical shortcomings but from poor communication and a failure to connect with stakeholders' real concerns.
The Problem: Building Cool Tech Nobody Uses#
The pair had faced a familiar trap—their team had invested heavily in building sophisticated internal solutions, yet developers largely ignored them. The turning point came when leadership shifted, forcing them to rethink how they pitched their work. Rather than assume technical merit would speak for itself, they developed a five-part framework to change hearts and minds.
Making Value Visible and Measurable#
The foundation was transparency. Hornung emphasized the power of DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, recovery time)—not because engineers love dashboards, but because business leaders understand them. When they first presented DORA numbers, stakeholders took notice. However, early measurements proved flawed; a pilot showed 77% faster deployments, but deeper analysis revealed gaps in how they'd tracked asynchronous deployment steps. Rather than hide the discrepancy, they owned it publicly—a move that paradoxically built credibility and pushed them toward a more narrative-driven approach.
Connecting Through Story, Not Logic#
The breakthrough came when they stopped arguing that GitOps was "technically superior" and started asking: What keeps developers awake at night? They created relatable personas—Junior Dev Hans-Peter, On-call Olaf, Feature-first Fiona—and told stories about their operational pain. Instead of abstract benefits, the pitch became personal: "GitOps means I sleep through the night." Matthaei noted that once developers saw their own struggles mirrored in these narratives, adoption soared.
The Execution: Two-Way Communication#
Success required selling in two directions simultaneously. Management needed business language and measurable outcomes; developers needed to feel understood. This meant setting up one-on-one meetings with stakeholders, listening to their problems, and asking for advice rather than preaching solutions. Hornung stressed that emotional resonance matters more than technical arguments: "You can have all the technical arguments you want, but if people don't feel it, you're on lost ground."
