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From Fake to Hero: The Evolutionary Journey of a DevOps Team Towards Platform Engineering



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The journey from traditional DevOps to platform engineering is both a challenging and rewarding transformation. This evolution requires a strategic approach, focusing on building internal capabilities, redefining roles, and embracing continuous change. This article delves into the essential steps and outcomes of this journey, providing a detailed roadmap for organizations looking to transition towards platform engineering.

Defining Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is a socio-technical approach that prioritizes user experience over tool selection, ensuring the entire organization benefits from the platform. Unlike traditional methods that focus only on software engineers, platform engineering engages all stakeholders, offering a holistic approach to system design and operations.

Some key principles of platform engineering include:

  1. User Experience First: Prioritize the user experience for all stakeholders.
  2. Holistic Stakeholder Engagement: Serve the needs of all stakeholders, not just developers.
  3. Continuous Improvement: Embrace change and consistently measure the impact of new initiatives.

Initial Challenges at Allianz Direct

When Sergiu Petean joined Allianz Direct, he inherited a technically sound team that lacked a clear identity and vision. The team had multiple identities, was overly reliant on external resources, and faced issues such as high turnover, a volatile technology stack, and unclear stakeholder engagement.

To address these challenges, the first step was building a cohesive internal team with a strong identity and clear mission. This involved hiring key personnel to anchor the team’s culture and establishing innovation sovereignty, empowering the team to create a future-proof platform. By defining the team’s mission, the goal became enabling teams to deploy, monitor, and maintain their environments independently.

Understanding the priorities of different stakeholders was crucial. Conducting a thorough stakeholder analysis allowed the team to measure the importance of various stakeholder needs and align their efforts with the organization’s most critical requirements.

With a clear mission and stakeholder alignment, the next step was to refine the technology stack. This involved analyzing both the current and future state of the platform, reorganizing the team for specialized roles, and embracing open-source solutions like the cloud-native stack to build robust, scalable solutions.

A critical test of the new platform was the redesign of the CI/CD stack using cloud-native principles. This transformation resulted in improved software delivery performance, as measured by industry-standard DORA metrics. Allianz Direct’s platform joined the top 11% of performers in software delivery, achieving on-demand releases and rapid recovery from failures.

As Allianz Direct scaled, the next step was adopting Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, transforming the central DevOps team into a dedicated SRE team. This cultural shift involved educating teams on operational excellence and enabling them to manage their alerts and incidents independently.

With the organization’s growth, managing cognitive load became a challenge. The solution was adopting a Distributed DevOps (DDO) model, structuring teams around the platform, and implementing a rotational model to prevent silos and ensure a comprehensive understanding of the platform.

The Road Ahead: Continuous Improvement and Innovation

While Allianz Direct was able to transform significantly by adopting platform engineering principles, platform engineering is an ongoing journey that requires continuous investment in internal capabilities, embracing change, and leveraging industry knowledge to avoid common pitfalls. The focus moving forward is to develop the team’s skills, stay agile, and collaborate with the community to drive innovation and avoid repeating common mistakes.

Conclusion

The transition from a traditional DevOps team to platform engineering is complex, but rewarding. By building a strong internal team, engaging stakeholders, developing a robust technology stack, and embracing continuous improvement, organizations can achieve significant improvements in performance and innovation. This not only enhances the technical capabilities of the team, but also aligns the organization towards a future-proof, scalable, and efficient platform.

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Author

  • As the Director of Cloud Engineering and Operations at Allianz Direct, Sergiu spearheads the development and evolution of the Cloud Native Infrastructure Platform, essential for the company’s strategic growth. In this pivotal role, he provides strategic leadership, driving automation initiatives to optimize IT infrastructure leveraging public cloud solutions, thus enhancing business agility and operational efficiencies in a data-driven manner.

    Prior to his current role, Sergiu served as the Global Head of Generative AI at Allianz Direct, where he led the development of the next-generation AI Platform, contributing significantly to the company’s digital transformation journey. His tenure at Allianz Direct showcased his profound understanding of European Financial Regulations and disruptive technologies, enabling the successful implementation of state-of-the-art Cloud Native technologies for a greenfield insurance platform across multiple countries.

    In addition to his corporate roles, Sergiu is an active participant in industry forums and initiatives. He currently serves as a Technical Advisory Board Member at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), representing the voice of the end-user community. Through this role, he ensures effective representation of end-user perspectives in community decisions, thereby contributing to the advancement of cloud-native technologies and practices.

    With a diverse background encompassing roles such as Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Automotive Equity Management Limited, Head of DevOps at BAWAG P.S.K., and various technical leadership positions at Siemens and ATOS, Sergiu brings a wealth of expertise in IT strategy, technical leadership, and innovative problem-solving to every endeavor.

    Director of Cloud Engineering and Operations


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