Building an internal developer platform at CVS Health | Jim Beyers (CVS Health)
Nov 22, 2023
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Jim Beyers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health, discusses building an internal developer platform, aligning with transformation goals, defining strategy, leveraging GCP, team building, collaboration, and reporting progress.
Building an internal developer platform at CVS Health is crucial for aligning with the company's broader transformation goals.
To successfully build a developer platform, it is important to win the hearts and minds of stakeholders through small wins, removing toil and distractions, and gaining top-down support.
Deep dives
Building an Internal Developer Platform at CVS Health
Jim Bayers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health, discusses his role in building an internal developer platform at CVS. He explains that he was brought in by Amrash Siva, Senior Vice President of Digital Engineering at CVS, due to his past experience in similar projects. The goal of the platform is to improve developer experience and align with CVS's broader transformation goals. Jim emphasizes the importance of building goodwill through small wins and removing toil and distractions for developers. He also highlights the significance of having top-down support and buy-in from executives.
Team Building and Strategy in Developing the Platform
Jim shares how he approached building his team and defining the strategy for the developer platform. He observed the company's current state and worked towards migrating to more specific, long-lived product teams. He explains the composition of the teams, which include architects, engineering managers, principal engineers, and product folks. He also discusses the importance of having product managers within the technical teams. Jim emphasizes the need for consensus-driven decision-making and the importance of foundational aspects like platform tenants.
The Vision and Features of the Developer Platform
Jim outlines his vision for the developer platform, which revolves around providing a container-specific platform that allows engineers to focus on running their applications without worrying about infrastructure details. He mentions the importance of an application registry that is dynamic and adaptable to changes. The platform aims to provide an easy onboarding process and enable self-service access to infrastructure resources. Jim also discusses leveraging third-party components and the potential need for building the platform in-house to accommodate CVS's scale and heterogeneity.
Evangelizing and Reporting Progress of the Developer Platform
Jim shares his approach to evangelizing the developer platform and gaining buy-in from developers and leaders within the organization. He emphasizes the importance of winning the hearts and minds of stakeholders, learning from past experiences, and avoiding mandates. Jim plans to start with teams that are eager to adopt the platform and report progress using metrics like DORA metrics, showcasing the higher quality and faster delivery of deployments.
This week's episode is with Jim Beyers, VP of Engineering Enablement at CVS Health. Jim joined CVS a year ago to lead an effort to build an internal developer platform. Abi and Jim discuss how Jim joined CVS to build an internal developer platform, what brought him to the job, and how the developer experience fits into the broader transformation goals of CVS. Additionally, this episode covers building the team, defining a strategy, and how he's thinking about winning the hearts and minds across his organization.
Discussion points:
(1:15) How Jim was brought into CVS
(2:39) How DevEx aligns with CVS’s transformation initiatives
(6:06) Jim’s vision for developer experience
(8:26) Building a DevEx team and working with product managers
(15:06) Defining and communicating a DevEx strategy
(19:37) Assessing Backstage and developing a platform
(24:40) Working with developers and leaders
(27:55) Working alongside colleagues tackling similar problems