Ehrkadairlides: A developer experience portal provides a lot of freedom for developers to do whatever they want. If you have a small developer population at your organization, it might be harder to justify the investment in a developer portal. "Being able to self-service needs across the company isn't as easy as jumping into a backend platform," he says.
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
Mentions and links:
Follow Karl on LinkedIn
The Runway platform at American Airlines
Read more on the engineering blog from American Airlines