Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

Leading platform engineering at Trivago | Thomas Khalil (Trivago)

Aug 22, 2023

30:52

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Episode guests

Thomas Khalil

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Quick takeaways

The structure of Thomas Khalil's team includes a platform team, a development experience team, and an observability pillar, each handling different aspects of engineering enablement.

The DevEx pillar within Thomas' team focuses on enabling and unblocking other teams, promoting reusability and improving convergence levels to increase productivity and make developers' lives easier.

Deep dives

Overview of the Team and Structure

Thomas Khalil, the head of platform at SRE at Chavago, discusses the structure of his team, which includes a platform team responsible for Cloud Landing Zone tenant management, a development experience team focused on tooling and documentation, and an observability pillar handling metrics and logging.

Challenges in adopting backstage and reasons for its failure

01:45

The Importance of Brand Awareness and Enablement

01:14

Introduction

2min

The Importance of Reliability in CI

2min

Devax: The Structure and Focus of a Team

4min

How Your Group Keeps an Ear to the Ground and Focuses on the Customer

2min

The Failure of Spotify Backstage

2min

The Failure of the MK Documentation Initiative

2min

How to Organize Your Sre Squads

2min

How to Inspire Your Team

2min

How to Measure Your Impact on Your Team

2min

10.

The Importance of Timing in the Cloud

3min

11.

The Importance of Brand Awareness

2min

12.

How the Devx Red Show Is Going to Work

4min

13.

How to Measure Your Build Time and Deployment

3min

Thomas Khalil, Head of Platform and SRE at Trivago, describes how the teams reporting into him are structured, the tactics they’re using to increase awareness of their work, and how they demonstrate their impact.

Discussion points:

(1:17) The pillars of the Central Platform organization
(2:18) The organization’s focus on time to market and efficiency
(3:09) The differences in developer experience between teams
(4:37) Deciding whether to consolidate services
(5:57) How platform, developer experience, observability, and SRE teams interact
(8:40) How these problems were being tackled previously
(10:09) A failed attempt at rolling out Backstage
(13:48) How SRE squads are organized
(15:39) How to motivate platform teams
(17:23) Demonstrating the impact of the organization
(18:42) How the data is collected
(22:32) How they’re increasing awareness for their work
(23:42) The DevEx pillar
(25:46) How the DevEx roadshow will work
(27:56) How DORA metrics fit into their measurement program

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Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

Leading platform engineering at Trivago | Thomas Khalil (Trivago)

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

Overview of the Team and Structure

Failed Attempt at Rolling Out Spotify Backstage

Measurement of Team Impact

Focus on DevX and Guidance

Challenges in adopting backstage and reasons for its failure

The Importance of Brand Awareness and Enablement

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts