Platform engineering-platform vs DevOps

DevOps = culture and practices (CI/CD, IaC, collaboration). Often "you build it, you run it"-teams own their pipelines and infra.

Platform engineering = a dedicated team builds and runs an internal platform that other developers use. The platform provides deploy, observability, databases, and networking so app teams do not build from scratch each time.

Think of it as "DevOps as a product": the platform team is the product team; the customers are internal developers.

Platform team = product team; customers = internal developers. Self-serve infra and golden paths so devs spend more time on features.

Self-serve = developers get what they need (environments, databases, APIs) through the platform without opening tickets. Click a button or run a command; the platform provisions and configures.

Golden path = the platform team defines a recommended, supported way to do things (e.g. "deploy with this pipeline, use this observability stack"). Faster and safer than every team inventing their own. Optional paths exist for edge cases.

Result: less duplication, consistent security and compliance, and developers spend more time on features and less on wiring infra.

Makes sense when: many teams, repeated needs (deploy, logs, DBs), and you want consistency and speed. One platform team invests; many teams benefit.

Overkill when: one or two teams, or needs are very different. Start with good DevOps practices and shared CI/CD; add a platform when the pain of everyone doing their own thing is high.