How many engineers should focus on platform? What’s the right size for a platform engineering team at the enterprise level?
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Start by building a list or backlog of enablement projects platform teams would take on. Relate the enhancements to productive somehow, connect the expense of a new team to the benefits.
Benefits can be very tangible such as increasing automation in deployment or testing that cuts down hours spent by humans. It can also be supported with 'quality of life' enhancements, which can really make a difference if your company has done any surveys that found staff are overwhelmed (it can help with retention).
Ultimately, the size should be what makes the necessary impact at your organization to achieve your plans.
It depends on the complexity of the organization and what needs to be included as part of the platform, but a good rule of thumb is around 10% of the engineering organization should be appointed to the platform team. Because platform simplifies, automates and standardizes applications across different engineering products, dedicating 10% to help build this will benefit the entire organization. If your platform is less complicated, then you may need closer to 5% dedicated to platform instead of 10%.
Platform engineering team works as a horizontal layer for all Engineering teams. The number of engineers depends on complexity of organization but it would be fair to say 1 resource per 2 teams. Ie If there are 6 teams handling Tech backends, It should be 3 engineerings in platform team.