Building a Collaborative Platform Culture in a Bank

Marcy Paramonova and Stéphane Cusin discussed how to build a collaborative platform culture within a bank at KubeCon & CloudNativeCon Europe. They explained that a platform is not just infrastructure, but a collaboration system where communication and interaction occur. Paramonova emphasized that culture follows structure, meaning that a shared set of standards and practices is necessary to foster an engineering mindset among developers and product teams.

The platform team offered open support sessions where developers could collaborate and solve problems together, moving away from the traditional support model of ticket-based assistance. These sessions brought together various technical teams, encouraging cooperation and shared learning. They also introduced super user awards to recognize developers who contributed to improving the platform, which helped create a sense of value and appreciation for the team's efforts.

Paramonova highlighted the importance of an engineering mindset, which focuses on problem-solving, continuous learning, and sharing passion for tackling challenges. This mindset is essential for adapting to new technologies and technologies.

The speakers discussed how they designed systems that fostered the desired culture within the organization. They emphasized the importance of rituals and routines around collaboration, such as holding a weekly "Genius Bar" where developers could ask questions and receive immediate feedback. They also organized user insights sessions to share priorities, progress, and roadmaps with users, fostering transparency and shared ownership.

Additionally, the platform team adopted a lifecycle approach for each capability, tracking usage, value, and potential improvements. This visibility allowed the team to make informed decisions about retiring outdated features and migrating to newer capabilities, ensuring a smooth and efficient platform evolution.

Overall, the key to creating a collaborative platform culture was to design systems and routines that naturally promote collaboration, feedback, and continuous improvement, rather than relying on external factors like individual requests or manual interventions.