The power of a brownfield mindset when building your platform

Platforms often evolve from recognizing inefficiencies in existing systems. In this talk, I’ll challenge the greenfield approach and share techniques for building successful brownfield platforms.

Platform engineering initiatives often assume you’re building something new, a greenfield product or a new cloud environment, CI/CD systems, and revamped data pipelines. But the reality often emerges quite differently. Platforms evolve from finding inefficiencies within developer teams or identifying opportunities to consolidate existing capabilities. In essence, platforms start by replacing something pre-existing. Brownfield software development is the development and deployment of new software and systems in the presence of existing and legacy systems. I’ll challenge the conventional greenfield approach by recognizing that most platforms are brownfield.