It Takes Two to Platformise

Platformisation is often misunderstood. Some see it as the platform team serving product teams. Others reduce it to shared backlogs, dependency management, or centralised prioritisation. These misconceptions miss the point.

A platform is not a service desk, nor an obstacle to product delivery. It is a system of leverage. Its value emerges only when two sides move together: platform and product. Like a dance, platformisation requires both partners to know their steps, keep their rhythm, and adjust to one another.

In other words: it takes two to platformise.

Modularity as the foundation of platform strategy

The most important quality of platform roadmaps is their modularity. Platformisation works when milestones are designed as blocks that are interchangeable, isolated, composable, and often optional.

• Interchangeable: If one product team cannot adopt, another can. No single adopter should block progress.
• Isolated: Each block must deliver value on its own, without hidden prerequisites or cascading dependencies.
• Composable: Blocks combine to create greater leverage, but each still stands independently.
• Optional: Adoption remains a choice. Teams that adopt gain speed and resilience. Those who do not bear the cost of alternative paths.

This modular approach allows roadmaps to bend without breaking. Alignment becomes about choosing which blocks to engage with, when, and how. Product teams preserve autonomy. Platform teams preserve leverage. The system as a whole gains flexibility.

Roadmaps as instruments, not contracts

The most common failure in platform work comes from treating roadmaps as contracts. Product teams expect precise delivery on their asks. Platform teams become cornered into committing to other people’s priorities. The outcome is predictable: resentment, delay, and lost leverage.

Roadmaps must instead serve as instruments of alignment. Each team owns its own roadmap, its own strategy, and its own rhythm. Platform defines how to scale, reduce friction, and increase self-service. Product defines how to meet customer needs and ship value. The key is not merging these into one artefact, but aligning them so that both sides can adjust while maintaining autonomy.

Granularity matters

The granularity of roadmaps plays a decisive role. Too coarse, and they become political: high-level themes with little clarity about what truly depends on what. Too fine-grained, and they collapse into false precision, binding everyone to ticket-level promises that cannot hold.

The appropriate level sits in between. Roadmaps should expose strategic blocks of work large enough to matter, but small enough to remain adaptable. These blocks provide the scaffolding for alignment. They also make interdependencies visible without suffocating both sides in detail.

Living with estimates and confidence

Another barrier to alignment lies in our collective discomfort with uncertainty. Many organisations demand commitments where only probabilities exist. Platformisation cannot thrive under that illusion.

Instead, teams should articulate estimates with a level of confidence. Some blocks will be near-certain, others more exploratory. What matters is honesty: alignment improves when roadmaps express probability, not false guarantees.

This honesty builds resilience. Shifts in delivery dates are then treated not as failure, but as updates to a shared probability model. Both platform and product can make better choices with the information available.

Vertical as well as lateral alignment

Alignment does not occur only between platform and product. It also occurs vertically, with the company’s strategy and objectives.

When a roadmap block links to a strategic goal, the conversation changes. Negotiation shifts from “my priority versus yours” to “how do we reinforce company goals together”. This vertical alignment creates purpose and reduces politics. It also strengthens trust: product teams see the platform not as a burden but as an amplifier of strategic ambition.

The common language of alignment

True alignment needs a shared language. That language is not tickets, nor vague themes. It is curated objectives with actual measures of success and progress.

The danger here is Goodhart’s law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If alignment reduces to chasing metrics for their own sake, the organisation suffers. Misaligned incentives, loss of purpose, wasted effort, and squandered budgets follow, while competitors thrive by staying focused on real outcomes.

The antidote is discipline. Strategy must precede objectives, and real objectives (defined as qualitative changes in customer behaviour), must precede key results, which are the quantitative measures. Objectives must remain authentic expressions of strategy, not vanity metrics. Progress must be measured in terms of adoption, leverage, and impact, not only delivery volume.

Alignment without subordination

The fundamental mistake lies in treating the platform as a dependency. A dependency waits for delivery. A platform offers a path to leverage.

Platformisation is not dependency management. It is mutual adoption. Platform teams should never be forced to choose priorities on behalf of product. Nor should they act as a bottleneck, carrying the burden of other teams’ delivery schedules.

Instead, alignment happens through roadmap dialogue. Each side sets its own direction. The overlap is where adoption lives. When those overlaps are modular, strategic, and transparent, both sides gain speed without sacrificing independence.

Principles for two-sided platformisation

1. Two roadmaps, one rhythm. Each team owns its plan, but they synchronise at regular intervals to adjust.
2. No silent passengers. Adoption is an active choice. Product teams must plan for it. Platform teams must enable it.
3. Alignment, not obedience. Roadmaps adapt to amplify leverage, not to comply with whoever shouts loudest.
4. Adoption as the metric. Success is measured by the proportion of product teams using the platform, not by tickets closed or features delivered.
5. From strategy to results. Strategy defines direction, objectives describe qualitative change, and key results capture quantitative evidence.
6. Objectives with discipline. Shared measures must reflect authentic intent, not devolve into empty targets.

Closing reflection

Teams must fight the urge to deliver volumes without meaningful measure. As Verne Harnish observed, we must do the right thing and do the right thing right. Ego must give way to the bigger picture, just as evolutionary psychology reminds us through the notion of the Darwin church: groups that prioritise collective success over individual pride are the ones that endure.

Platformisation is a discipline of mutual responsibility. It is not a one-sided act, but a shared dance. Product teams must own adoption. Platform teams must own enablement. Both must own alignment.

When roadmaps are granular, estimates are honest, blocks are modular, and objectives are disciplined, platformisation becomes more than a buzzword. It becomes a system of leverage.

And like any good dance, it only works when both partners keep step.