2025-09-16 –, Bierstadt Lagerhaus Stage
Platform teams everywhere fall into the "build it and they will come" trap. We obsess over APIs and automation while our Internal Developer Platforms gather dust and developers keep doing workarounds.
An Apple quote of 30 years ago "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it."
Through lessons learned building developer platforms at previous organizations, I'll share why we struggle to measure what matters most. While we track deployment frequency and lead times, we're missing the human signals—the surveys, conversations, and feedback loops that actually predict platform success.
You'll discover how to shift from building projects with endpoints to building products that evolve, why your best metrics come from developer happiness surveys not dashboards, and practical strategies for turning platform skeptics into advocates.
Avoid building in isolation. Start building communities.
Luke Philips is a Staff Engineer and Software A̶r̶c̶h̶i̶t̶e̶c̶t̶ Custodian. Trying to sweep together the best ideas from all sources. Previously of the New York Times, and a long career in Telecom at Charter, CenturyLink, and Level 3 Communications. With a mixed focus on continuous delivery, orchestration solutions, enterprise, Kubernetes, open source, networking, and cloud-native technologies. On the side Luke dabbles in Wardley Mapping and strategic proficiency.