How Spotify Overcame Opposition to Build a Developer Portal

Karl’s team at American Airlines were early adopters of Backstage, and in this episode he shares their journey of implementing and rolling out a developer portal. He also describes two of the extensions his team has built for their portal.

Discussion points:

• (1:24) Where the idea of building a developer portal came from
• (7:24) What the developer experience looked like before the portal 
• (10:41) Initiating the project
• (14:16) The decision to choose Backstage 
• (16:28) The V1 scope for the portal 
• (19:14) Getting adoption for the portal
• (23:35) Defining success for the portal’s adoption 
• (28:04) The ideal state for how developers will use the portal
• (30:56) Who should or shouldn’t invest in building a developer portal 
• (33:14) Custom extensions Karl’s team has developed for their portal
• (37:46) What’s difficult about developing a new plugin for the backstage platform

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Mentions and links:
Follow Karl on LinkedIn
The Runway platform at American Airlines
Read more on the engineering blog from American Airlines