Platform Engineering #4: How to Measure the Success of Your Internal Developer Platform
Measure correctly the usage of your Internal Developer Platform - turn it into an outstanding product for your developers
Hey Folks 👋,
I'm Romaric Philogene, CEO and co-founder of Qovery, and in this fourth post on my Substack. In my previous post, we explored how to design an excellent Developer Experience. As platform engineers, we know that our work doesn't end at deployment. It's about nurturing and growing the platform. So, how do we gauge if we're on the right track? Let's explore together.
Adoption is about making our platform the preferred choice!
The Adoption Puzzle: It's About Winning Hearts
Adoption is more than just logging in; it's about making our platform the preferred choice. We're not just offering a tool; we're offering a better way to work.
Ask yourself: Are our colleagues naturally gravitating towards our platform, or are we still seeing a reliance on old habits and shadow IT solutions 😅? The answer lies in understanding their daily challenges and how our platform can be the solution they didn’t even know they needed.
Engagement: The True Measure of Attraction
Engagement is the pulse of our platform. Using open-source tools like Posthog (
), we can dive into how often and how deeply our colleagues interact with our platform. Which features are their favorites? Where do they spend most of their time? This isn’t just data; it’s the story of our platform’s place in their work life.Something easy that you can follow over time is the number of developers supposed to use your platform vs. the number of developers who has at least sign in once on your platform.
E.g.: 100 developers in my organization where 70 who sign in at least once = 70% engagement rate. Ask yourself, why 30% of your developers didn’t sign in once. Did they know about your platform? Did they use something else to do their job?
Retention: Keeping the Flame Alive
Retention is our litmus test. Are our colleagues consistently using the platform, or is their interest waning? Here, tools like (again) Posthog come in handy, offering us a window into user retention and highlighting any red flags where we might be losing our users’ interest.
It’s your job to define the retention metric you want to track. You can ask yourself, what action(s) means that your user are still actively using your platform?
For instance, most of our users at Qovery (Internal Developer Platform) estimate that their developers are still actively using Qovery when they create Ephemeral Environments for their Pull Request. Since it requires a tiny manual effort from them, it’s a volountary action that means a lot.
Feel free to define yours to know how much your platform is loved over time and show to your managers how well you measure your success.
Feedback: Our North Star
The feedback from our colleagues is invaluable. It's the compass that guides our improvements. Whether through surveys, internal messager, or casual chats by the coffee machine, every piece of feedback is a golden opportunity to refine our platform. Again, a product like Posthog (I’m not affiliated I promise), can help you to gather feedback with their Survey feature.
Communication: The Unsung Hero
Never underestimate the power of good communication. Sharing updates, improvements, and a glimpse into our roadmap keeps everyone in the loop and excited about what’s next. It’s about creating a sense of shared journey and anticipation.
Tools of the Trade
Usage Analytics: Posthog, Mixpanel, June… Measuring your product usage is key.
Feature-Specific Tracking: LaunchDarkly (again Posthost) can help you to see which features are hitting the mark.
Surveys and Feedback: Tools like SurveyMonkey (again Posthog) give you direct insights from our users.
NPS Surveys: Tools like Posthog (😁) are great for getting a quick pulse on overall user sentiment.
Wrapping Up
In the end, it’s about more than just metrics. It’s about understanding your developers, their needs, and how our platform makes their workday better. As we continue to evolve and improve our Internal Developer Platforms, let’s keep these measures close to our hearts.
Stay tuned for my next piece, where we’ll delve into the nuances of effective communication within platform engineering. Until then, keep listening, keep improving, and keep inspiring!
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