Platform leadership 101: Why 67% of platforms fail (and how to avoid it)

67% of platform leaders struggle to build successful, scalable Internal Developer Platforms. Common pitfalls like unclear baselines and lack of stakeholder alignment, challenges slow progress, waste resources, and doom platform engineering initiatives. With experience guiding hundreds of Platform Engineers and enterprise teams, Mallory brings a deep understanding of the cultural and technical hurdles organizations face when launching platform engineering efforts. In this session, Mallory explores: - How Platform as a Product and the Minimum Viable Platform framework can help you kick off and sustain your journey - How to effectively advocate for your platform across all levels of the organization - Why alignment between the platform team and stakeholders is essential, and how to achieve it We also introduce our Platform Engineering Certification program, designed to build shared understanding, teach the fundamentals, and help your team define a clear, unified vision for your platform initiative. __________________ Speaker: Mallory Haigh - Workshop Host, Platform Engineering Mallory is Humanitec's Principal Platform Advocate with a background in customer support and success, full-stack software engineering, engineering management, and focusing on the strength of combining humans and technology. She brings a passion for education, the anthropological approach to software engineering, and improving developer experience to her role at Humanitec. When not connecting people with their platforms, Mallory is an avid equestrian and hobby farmer, and also a cat and dog mom. Have questions? Share them on the Platform Engineering Slack: https://platformengineering.org/slack-rd