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Collaboration With Product And Dev Teams

Learn Collaboration With Product And Dev Teams for free with explanations, exercises, and a quick test (for Platform Engineer).

Published: January 23, 2026 | Updated: January 23, 2026

Table of Contents

Why this matters

Platform Engineers succeed when product and development teams can ship quickly and safely. Collaboration is how you discover real needs, set the right priorities, and roll out platform changes without disruption.

  • Clarify priorities: Turn vague requests into clear problem statements and measurable outcomes.
  • Reduce lead time: Co-design paved paths, templates, and CI/CD that developers actually adopt.
  • Increase reliability: Coordinate deprecations, migrations, and incident response across teams.
  • Measure value: Connect platform work to product delivery metrics like cycle time and change failure rate.

Concept explained simply

Think of your platform as an internal product. Product and dev teams are your customers. Collaboration is the feedback loop that keeps the platform useful and adopted.

Mental model: The Collaboration Loop

  1. Intake: Teams submit a need or pain (problem, impact, urgency).
  2. Triage: You assess value, scope, and alignment with strategy.
  3. Co-design: You shape the solution with early adopters.
  4. Pilot: Roll out to a small group; gather feedback.
  5. General availability: Document, enable, and support broader adoption.
  6. Measure & iterate: Track adoption, outcomes, and fix friction points.
Helpful tools and artifacts
  • Lightweight RFCs and ADRs to make decisions transparent.
  • RACI for shared responsibilities (who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed).
  • Operating cadences: office hours, demos, and quarterly planning with partner teams.

Core cadences and artifacts

Intake form (keep it short)

{
  "team": "Checkout",
  "problem": "Flaky integration tests slow releases",
  "impact": "2 hours/day lost; failed deploys weekly",
  "desired_outcome": "Stable CI with faster feedback",
  "urgency": "High (Q1 OKR)"
}

Decision record (ADR) skeleton

Title: Standardize service template with built-in CI
Context: Slow onboarding, inconsistent pipelines
Decision: Provide a default template + shared CI jobs
Consequences: Faster setup; need migration plan for legacy repos

Cadences that work

  • Weekly triage: Review new requests; size and route.
  • Bi-weekly demos: Show progress; invite feedback early.
  • Monthly office hours: Live support for migrations.
  • Quarterly planning: Align platform roadmap with product goals.

Worked examples

1) Rolling out a new CI pipeline
  • Intake: Devs report long CI times (20 min avg) and frequent cache misses.
  • Co-design: Pair with one squad to design shared cache + parallel jobs.
  • Pilot: 3 services; measure time-to-green pre/post.
  • GA: Provide a shared CI template, migration guide, and office hours.
  • Metric: Median CI time drops from 20 to 8 minutes; adoption hits 70% in 6 weeks.
2) Introducing service templates
  • Problem: Onboarding a new microservice takes days and results vary.
  • Solution: One-click repo template with standardized Dockerfile, health checks, CI, and observability.
  • Collaboration: Product teams define minimal runtime needs; SRE reviews reliability defaults.
  • Outcome: Onboarding time reduced from 2 days to 2 hours; fewer production misconfigs.
3) Deprecating self-managed Kafka
  • Context: High ops burden; frequent incidents.
  • Plan: Migrate to managed streaming service; phase-by-phase with dual-write period.
  • Collaboration: Product teams co-define migration windows; platform provides SDK adapters and dashboards.
  • Risk control: Freeze new topics on legacy cluster; publish clear cutover dates.
  • Result: Incident rate and on-call load drop; devs regain focus on features.

Communication patterns that build trust

One-pager template 
Title: What changes and why (1 sentence)
Problem: User and business impact today
Proposal: The change, who it helps, success criteria
Timeline: Pilot window, GA date, deprecation date (if any)
Actions: What teams must do (if anything)
Support: Where to ask questions (office hours, channel)
Owner: Name(s) and escalation path
User story mapping (lightweight) 
As a developer, I want a default CI job that runs tests in < 10 min
so that I get fast feedback and can merge more confidently.
Acceptance criteria checklist
  • Works for top 3 languages used internally.
  • Docs include a copy-paste example and a rollback path.
  • Monitoring dashboard shows adoption and error rate.
  • Pilot users confirm performance improvement.

Running an effective intake and triage

  1. Collect: Use the short intake form; require problem and impact.
  2. Cluster: Group similar requests into themes (e.g., CI speed, provisioning).
  3. Score: Value vs. effort with simple buckets (High/Med/Low).
  4. Decide: Accept, schedule, or decline with rationale.
  5. Close the loop: Reply with next steps and expected dates.
Triage rubric (example)
  • Value: Saves ≥ 1 hour/week per developer = High.
  • Risk: Production impact or security gap = High priority.
  • Effort: Under 2 weeks = Quick win; batch for faster ROI.
  • Strategic fit: Aligns with current quarter focus = Move to top.

Metrics that matter

  • Adoption: % of services on paved paths/templates.
  • Lead time for platform changes: Idea to GA for a platform capability.
  • Support load: Tickets per 10 developers; time to first response.
  • Outcome metrics: CI duration, change failure rate, MTTR (as influenced by platform).
  • Developer satisfaction: Simple quarterly pulse survey (1–5).

Tip: Share metrics in demos; celebrate wins with partner teams.

Exercises

These mirror the interactive exercises below. Try them now, then compare with the solutions.

Exercise 1: Write a one-pager for a platform change

  • Pick a real pain (e.g., flaky tests or slow builds).
  • Fill the one-pager template (Problem, Proposal, Timeline, Actions, Support, Owner).
  • Keep it to 250 words max; clarity beats detail.

Exercise 2: Rollout and stakeholder plan

  • Choose a deprecation or migration you might run.
  • Create a three-phase plan: Pilot, GA, Deprecation.
  • List who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed for each phase.

Self-check checklist

  • Your problem statement describes impact, not a solution.
  • Your timeline includes a reversible pilot window.
  • You defined a success metric that users care about.
  • You identified where questions will be answered (e.g., office hours).

Common mistakes and how to self-check

Building in isolation

Fix: Always involve 1–2 squads as design partners. Add a user acceptance step before GA.

Over-long documents

Fix: Start with a one-pager. Link to details later; optimize for decision speed.

Unclear ownership in rollouts

Fix: Use a simple RACI and publish it in the one-pager.

No exit/rollback plan

Fix: Include a rollback path and pilot success criteria up front.

Practical projects

  • Create an internal "paved path" for a common service type and run a two-week pilot with one squad.
  • Stand up monthly office hours and measure questions resolved live vs. async.
  • Build a migration dashboard (adoption %, blockers) from simple repo tags or CI metadata.

Who this is for

  • Platform engineers and SREs who serve multiple product teams.
  • Tech leads responsible for CI/CD, templates, or developer experience.

Prerequisites

  • Basic understanding of your org's product roadmap and tech stack.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code concepts.

Learning path

  1. Use the intake form for the next 3 requests and run a weekly triage.
  2. Run one co-design session with a partner squad; capture decisions in an ADR.
  3. Pilot a platform change with clear success metrics; then generalize.

Mini challenge

You must sunset a legacy artifact store in 90 days. Draft a 6-sentence one-pager and a three-phase plan. Identify two risks and how you will mitigate them. Keep it short, then ask a peer for feedback.

Next steps

  • Pick one real pain point and ship a pilot in 2 weeks.
  • Set up a recurring 30-minute demo for platform updates.
  • Adopt a lightweight ADR process for platform decisions.

Quick Test is available to everyone; log in to save your progress.

Ready for the quick test? Scroll to the Quick Test section below.

Practice Exercises

2 exercises to complete

Instructions

Choose a real or hypothetical platform improvement (e.g., shared CI cache, new service template, observability defaults). Write a one-pager using the template in the lesson. Keep it under 250 words.

  • State the problem in terms of impact.
  • Describe the proposal and success criteria.
  • Provide a pilot timeline and GA date.
  • List actions required (if any) for product/dev teams.
  • Name the owner and where support questions go.
Expected Output
A concise one-pager that a product team can read in 2 minutes and understand what changes, why it matters, what to do, and when.

Collaboration With Product And Dev Teams — Quick Test

Test your knowledge with 7 questions. Pass with 70% or higher.

7 questions70% to pass
Reliability And SLO ThinkingSelf Serve Infrastructure Principles

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