Common platform team mistakes and how to avoid them - Camille Fournier | PlatformCon 2025

Platform engineering functions as a leadership discipline focused on managing organizational complexity and delivering business leverage through a curated product approach. Successful platform teams require a hybrid of software engineering and operational expertise, ensuring they maintain production ownership to remain relevant. Rather than acting as a "feature factory" that simply fulfills requests, teams should identify and scale successful internal solutions while maintaining deep customer empathy. Avoid the high-risk trap of "V2" rewrites, which often ignore existing observable behaviors and user dependencies. Instead, prioritize incremental evolution and strategic stakeholder management. Effective communication—tailored to specific business needs rather than raw data dumps—is essential for securing support and demonstrating the tangible impact of platform initiatives on overall organizational productivity.