For the sake of developer productivity, don’t start your platform journey with IDPs or genAI

The article discusses the challenges faced by platform engineers in choosing the right first initiative for their platform journey. It highlights that while generative AI and internal developer portals (IDPs) can have high impact, they are complex solutions that demand ongoing investment and may not demonstrate immediate ROI. Instead, it recommends cloud development environments (CDEs) as an alternative solution with a more immediate ROI. CDEs automate and secure development environments while acting as a distribution platform for platform tooling and standards, enabling platform teams to shift their influence to the inner loop of the software development life cycle and unblock core developers' productivity issues.