Platform Engineering Fundamentals

A book-shaped table of contents for platform engineering fundamentals: evolution and organizational foundations, platform-as-a-product thinking, core principles (self-service, golden paths, automation, APIs), design principles, the platform lifecycle, DORA/SPACE metrics, anti-patterns, enterprise governance, and MAANG interview prep — cross-linking existing sre/patterns/observability/projects notes instead of duplicating them.

1 — Conway's Law

How Conway's Law ties software architecture to organizational communication structure, and what that implies for platform team boundaries.

2 — Team Topologies

Introduces the four fundamental team types from Team Topologies — stream-aligned, platform, enabling, and complicated-subsystem — and their interaction modes.

3 — Cognitive Load

Defines the types of cognitive load a platform absorbs on behalf of stream-aligned teams, and how a platform's scope should be sized against it.

1 — The Evolution of Infrastructure Engineering

Traces infrastructure engineering from physical servers through virtualization, the rise of cloud computing, and infrastructure automation to the point where platform engineering became necessary.