You Can't Improve What You Don't Measure
A product mindset requires product metrics. Without measurement, you are flying blind — you cannot tell whether your platform is genuinely improving developer experience or just generating activity. Choosing the right metrics is as important as collecting them.
Vanity Metrics (Avoid These)
Vanity metrics look impressive but don't tell you whether the platform is delivering value:
- Number of API calls: Could be a busy loop or a misconfigured retry storm.
- Number of tickets closed: Closing tickets fast doesn't mean developers are unblocked — it might mean tickets are being closed without resolution.
- Lines of infrastructure code written: More code is not better. Less code that solves more problems is better.
- Number of features shipped by the platform team: Features that nobody uses are waste.
Value Metrics (Track These)
Value metrics measure outcomes for your customers — the developers:
| Metric | What It Measures | How to Collect |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary Adoption Rate | % of eligible teams using the platform without mandate | Track via platform telemetry |
| Time to Hello World (TTHW) | Time for a new hire to deploy a basic app to production | Measure during onboarding; target: minutes, not days |
| Developer NPS | "How likely are you to recommend the platform to a colleague?" (0–10) | Quarterly survey; target: >30 |
| Deployment Frequency | How often teams deploy to production | DORA metric; platform should increase this |
| Change Failure Rate | % of deployments causing incidents | DORA metric; platform should decrease this |
| Platform Team Leverage | Ratio of developers supported per platform engineer | Proves automation is scaling |
The DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, Mean Time to Recovery) are the gold standard for measuring software delivery performance. A platform that genuinely improves developer experience will show up in these metrics. If your platform is not moving the DORA metrics, it is not delivering its core value.
When asked "How do you measure the success of an internal platform?", avoid listing activity metrics like "tickets closed" or "features shipped." Instead, anchor your answer to developer outcomes: Time to Hello World, voluntary adoption rate, and DORA metrics. Explain that a platform team's job is to improve the velocity and reliability of the teams they serve — and that those teams' metrics are the platform's metrics.