background

This is something I’ve always wanted to write about but haven’t, because I’ve always seen things that are too limited, either in my own company, or in the platforms of big factories, with no idea of the intermediate state or other routes of research and development. But last week we got a chance to see the last pieces of a mid-sized software company’s development platform. In the end, the shard was really interesting, a lot of development resources went into it, but it didn’t really work. It’s a pity that there are so many r&d resources invested, and it’s a pity that so many people have to use this platform. After 2 years of development on this platform, you may find that the technology is still low than when you graduated.

Current status of platform development

  1. The performance of 0.5% of the first-line companies in the industry, whether it is micro services, cloud native, data center and so on, new terms and new technologies emerge in an endless stream in the first-line companies.
  2. 1.5% of the leading companies in the industry apply what they have learned. Under the leadership of the leading companies, companies with certain R&D resources and unique scenarios really build a set of technology platforms that meet their own characteristics, which can effectively improve the r&d efficiency.
  3. 93% of companies are doing the same thing. Many now boast of using microservices or building their own data center, but most are not reduced to a single piece of data on a powerpoint presentation or several pages of architecture.
  4. The remaining 5% don’t care about platforms, make more money than anything else, and at best clean up reused code and put it on Github for reuse.

The phenomenon of benign platform development

Have real usage scenarios

A business company that has a group of people spend a lot of time developing a software platform is bound to solve some problem, and then the platform will improve efficiency and make more money. So software platform development must be built around the scenario, and most platform development is completely research and development for research and development sake.

The effect of the platform should be supported by clear data

There must be quantitative data to support the effectiveness of using this platform over the original model. Otherwise it’s just a line on a powerpoint presentation.

Continuous technology evolution

Although the initial technology of the platform is limited by the environment in which r&d is initiated, a viable platform must evolve and update with industry technology. If your platform is still using technology from 10 years ago, it’s a problem to train the developers to maintain it.

For real users

The research and development platform is to improve the overall research and development efficiency of the company. It is for front-line users rather than leaders’ PPT.

The last

I feel like I’ve just started. I’ll continue with the platform development story later.