The platform is a balancing act

Every platform team juggles three competing concerns:

• Velocity: How fast can developers ship?
• Governance: Are we compliant, secure, and cost-effective?
• Maintainability: Can we sustain this long-term?

Early-stage companies usually prioritize velocity over everything else ("move fast and break things"). As companies mature, governance becomes critical as regulatory requirements kick in, security incidents become a bigger concern, or cloud costs spiral out of control. Eventually, technical debt accumulates and maintainability demands attention.

The key insight is that there's no universal "right" balance. A 10-person startup and a 1,000-person enterprise need fundamentally different trade-offs.

The platform team's job is to consciously choose the right balance for your organization's current stage, then actively adjust as your needs evolve. This requires honest conversations with stakeholders about trade-offs and regular reassessment of priorities.