The field guide
People First,
Platform Second.
Why your team design is making or breaking your platform initiative.
Platform leaders spend enormous effort designing platforms. Far fewer spend the same effort designing the teams responsible for delivering them. This field guide is about that imbalance, and what to do about it.
EARLY ACCESSChapter 1, is available now.
The field guide is still being written. I’m opening a limited number of early-reader spots for people who want to read the chapters as they’re released, and help shape the final field guide.
Early readers will receive:
- New chapters before the final release
- Opportunities to provide feedback as the book develops
- Optional acknowledgment in the final edition
- Early-reader pricing when it is finished
Join the early-reader groupAccepting a limited number of requests.
Once the group is full, early access closes.
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What is inside
Four sections. Each one builds the next.
Learning to See
Understanding the orientation of individuals
The Platform Reflects the Team
Two organizations, near identical stacks, entirely different platforms. What a platform records is not what a team said it valued.
Why We See Different Things
Selective perception, the limits of attention, and why two experienced leaders read the same platform and name different first problems.
The Four Priorities
Engineering, Operations, Product, and Enablement. What each one protects, and what each one stops seeing when it dominates the room.
Looking in the Mirror
Orientation is a starting place, not an identity. Why the hardest person to observe is the one doing the observing.
Orientation DiscoveryField exercise
A self-appraisal followed by twelve platform scenarios. Where those two columns disagree is the most useful thing on the page.
Map the Room
Understanding team composition before attempting change
The Room, Not Just the Person
Teams develop orientations no individual chose. How to read a room's lean from first questions, from speed, and from who has to carry a concern into it.
The Mosaic
Why a team is composed rather than blended, why the org chart cannot answer this question, and why an artifact beats an impression.
Map the RoomField exercise
Individual profiles become a team picture. Completed together, not by one person on everyone else's behalf.
The Pendulum Problem
How success narrows a room. Why the swing is not the failure, but evidence the drift went unnoticed long enough for reality to force the correction.
Know Your Strategy
Aligning composition to what you are actually being asked to deliver
The subject this section explores
A lean is only a problem relative to something. So which orientation does this team actually need, and what do you do when the map and the strategy disagree?
Still taking shape.
Know Your Purpose
The leadership work that makes deliberate design hold
The subject this section explores
You cannot hire your way to every orientation you need. So what does it take to grow one a team does not currently have?
Who this is for
Built for people who already know something is off.
You do not need to have heard the talk. You need a leader willing to be honest about what the map shows, and a team willing to have the conversation it reveals.
Platform engineering leaders
Your platform has the talent. It does not have the results.
Find the lean, name it with your team, and build a plan that does not require a reorganization to act on.
Individual contributors
Know where your attention naturally begins.
Section 1 is written for an individual and stands alone. Understanding your orientation changes how you hear the room long before it changes the room.
Engineering managers
You are about to make a hiring decision.
Section 3 covers what to do when the map and the strategy disagree, including when to cultivate the orientation you need and when to go hire it.
CTOs and VPs of engineering
Two teams, same org chart, entirely different platforms.
The org chart explains how a team is organized. It cannot explain which way the team leans. This is the map that can.
Common questions
Before you sign up
Is this actually free?
Every early release is free while the guide is being written. When it is finished it becomes a paid product, and everyone on the early access list gets it at early access pricing.
What do you want in return?
Honest feedback. I would rather hear it now than after it ships. Contributors who opt-in will be named in the acknowledgments.
How is this different from the free assessment?
The free assessment is a short version of Field Exercise 1 and gives you your orientation in about five minutes. The field guide is the argument underneath it: why orientation forms, how it accumulates into a team lean, and what to do when that lean stops matching what the organization needs. The assessment gives you an answer. The guide gives you the method.
Do I need my whole team to get value from it?
No. Section 1 is written for an individual and stands alone. Sections 2 and 3 are where the team comes in, and Field Exercise 2 is explicitly designed to be completed together rather than by one person on everyone else's behalf.
How do I get notified when the guide is finished?
Join the early-access list to receive new chapters along the way and be notified when the finished guide is released.
Not ready to go it alone?
Bring in a fractional platform leader.