Day 1 | Session 1 of 4
This session answers the "why" before diving into the "how." You'll assess your current platform maturity, identify developer friction points, and understand the design principles that separate a successful IDP from a pile of tools bolted together. Everything in this session runs with Python 3 alone — no cluster needed yet.
- Why platform engineering exists and the problems it solves
- Platform as Product thinking and Conway's Law
- The maturity model: from ad-hoc scripts to self-service platform
- Design principles from The Platform Engineer's Handbook
- How to measure developer experience (DevEx) as a baseline
- Comfortable using a terminal (cd, ls, running scripts)
- Basic Python 3 (running scripts, reading output — no advanced coding needed)
- General understanding of what a software development lifecycle looks like
- No Kubernetes or cloud experience required — Session 1 is entirely conceptual
- Python 3.10+
python3 verify_module.py| Folder | What's Inside |
|---|---|
| demo/ | Platform maturity assessment (interactive) |
| takehome/ | Deep analysis: design principles checklist, DevEx survey, friction analyzer, KPI baseline |
# Demo — score your org across self-service, observability, security, and DevEx
cd demo
python3 platform-maturity-assessment.py
# Take-home exercises
cd takehome
# Evaluate against the 12 platform design principles (API-first, guardrails, etc.)
python3 design-principles-checklist.py ../demo/platform-config.yaml
# Interactive CLI survey — collects developer feedback, produces a DevEx score (0-100)
python3 devex-survey.py
# Map the onboarding workflow step by step and rank friction points by time impact
python3 friction-analyzer.py --workflow onboarding
# Collect DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate) as your baseline
python3 platform-kpi-collector.pyYou can't improve what you don't measure. The maturity assessment and KPI baseline you establish here become your "before" snapshot — you'll revisit them in Session 9 to prove the platform's value.
This session covers Chapters 1-3 of The Platform Engineer's Handbook, which goes further into Platform as Product, Team Topologies, and organizational design patterns. See the book repo for the full code samples.