Weekly Reflection #14 - Testing Assumptions
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe)
Insight
Platform engineering boils down to consistently delivering positive results on high impact internal projects. Good platform engineering initiatives are measurable and improve the wellbeing of the team (and by extension the organization). To pull this off platform engineers follow a process.
- Observe and identify real problems
- Develop a hypothesis
- Execute on a plan that includes experiments testing this hypothesis
- Analyze the results
- Use a feedback loop to iterate rapidly
If this sounds eerily like the scientific method, you get a gold star. That is exactly what this is. Platform engineering is all about using the scientific method and the discipline of software engineering to measurably improve software delivery.
Wisdom
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong, that's all there is to it. - Richard Feynman
Reflection
What project are you working on right now that just seems to be a bit "off"? What experiments could you run to test your assumptions about the problem?
Lagniappe
- Debug Mode DELAYED - I'm moving the FREE Office hours back two weeks. Our next is March 19th, 2026 on Youtube Live. Sign up here.
- Our newest episode of Book Overflow is out. This week we discuss the second half of Frictionless by Nicole Forsgren and Abi Noda, a book on DevEx and the importance of reducing friction in our work.
- As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Reply and let me know what resonates.