Self-service for developers, guardrails for the platform
Give developers a Backstage portal, golden paths and self-service environments, so starting a service or getting a test environment no longer needs a ticket.
Overview
As engineering teams grow, the platform team becomes a queue. Every new service, database or preview environment needs a ticket, and every team sets things up slightly differently. Onboarding new engineers slows down because knowledge lives in people's heads.
We build an internal developer platform sized to your organisation. Usually that is a Backstage portal with a software catalogue, a few golden path templates for your common service types, and self-service environments built on the infrastructure and GitOps you already have. We start with the most frequent requests and add more only when they prove useful.
Signs you need this
- Creating a new service takes days of copying an old repository and fixing it
- Nobody can say quickly who owns a given service or where its docs are
- Developers wait on the platform team for routine environments and databases
- Each service has different CI, logging and deployment setups
What you get
- Developer portal
- Backstage deployed in your cloud with SSO, a software catalogue populated from your repositories and TechDocs.
- Golden path templates
- Scaffolder templates for your main service types, with CI, deployment, logging and alerting included from the first commit.
- Self-service environments
- Preview or test environments created from a pull request or portal action and removed automatically when no longer needed.
- Infrastructure requests
- Portal actions or Crossplane claims for common resources such as databases and queues, within limits you set.
- Ownership model
- Every service in the catalogue linked to a team, on-call contact, repository and runbook.
How the work runs
- 1
Developer interviews
1 to 2 weeks
Talk to developers and the platform team, list the most common requests and where time is lost.
- 2
Portal and catalogue
2 to 4 weeks
Deploy Backstage, connect SSO and source control, and populate the catalogue with ownership data.
- 3
Golden paths
3 to 6 weeks
Build templates and self-service actions for the top requests, test them with one pilot team, and adjust.
- 4
Rollout
2 to 4 weeks
Bring remaining teams on, write contribution guidelines and hand the portal to an internal owner.
Timings depend on the size of your estate. The assessment fixes them before any build starts.
What you can check afterwards
- New services can be created from a template without a platform ticket
- Every production service in the catalogue has a named owning team
- Preview environments are created and removed without manual work
- An internal owner maintains the portal and accepts contributions from other teams
Tools we work with
- Backstage
- TechDocs
- Crossplane
- Argo CD
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions
- Kubernetes
- vCluster
- PostgreSQL
- Okta
Questions buyers ask
- Are we too small for a developer platform?
- Below a few teams, a good template repository and clear docs may be enough, and we will say so. The portal pays off when requests and services outgrow what people can remember.
- Does Backstage need a dedicated team?
- It needs an owner and some regular upkeep, especially plugin and version updates. We keep the setup small so one engineer can maintain it part-time.
- Will developers lose freedom?
- Golden paths are the easy default, not the only option. Teams can step outside them, but the supported route is faster.
- What access do you need?
- Access to your source control organisation, identity provider configuration, a Kubernetes cluster to host the portal and your infrastructure repositories.
Talk to us about internal developer platforms.
Tell us what you run and where. We reply within one business day with questions or a quote.