Platform engineering builds an internal product that gives developers safe self-service paths to cloud capabilities. A golden path packages proven architecture, identity, networking, delivery, observability, security, and operations into a supported template. It should make the safe path easier while preserving documented escape hatches for legitimate exceptions.
The product includes documentation, support, SLOs, roadmap, telemetry, and deprecation—not just a Terraform module repository.
Start from high-frequency journeys:
Each path supplies repository scaffold, IaC, CI/CD, identity, private connectivity, dashboards, alerts, runbooks, budgets, policy compliance, and ownership metadata.
Ask only decisions developers understand: workload, environment, criticality, data classification, region, expected load, dependencies, and owner. The platform derives naming, tags, network placement, identity, policies, and standard monitoring. Expose advanced settings only when a real variation exists.
Product names change; preserve the API/contracts and user journey rather than coupling the platform to a portal screen.
The platform team must publish and sign the template/module, document cost and permissions, and provide a versioned release. The developer supplies only approved inputs such as environment, region, classification, and owner.
Ways to build
Choose the Azure tool you want to use. The underlying resource stays the same.
Review azure.yaml, IaC, and hooks before running the template. Inspect the environment outputs without committing .azure metadata or secrets, run the template's health checks, and use azd down only after confirming the environment is disposable.
Measure adoption and outcomes:
Do not reward resource count or force adoption without proving a better path.
A team can request an exception with requirement, threat/cost/operations impact, owner, compensating controls, and expiry. The platform team can add a supported variation when demand repeats. One-off exceptions remain isolated so they do not complicate the golden path for everyone.
Publish immutable versions, changelogs, compatibility, migration automation, and deprecation dates. Test template upgrades against existing environments, not only fresh deployment. Use canary adopters and fleet inventory. Avoid copying module source into each repository because fixes cannot propagate.
Provide approved model deployments, quotas, routing, RAG ingestion, evaluation gates, tracing, content safety, agent tool registry, and human-approval components. Centralize guardrails without centralizing every product prompt or domain decision. Meter tokens and tool actions by product/tenant.