Backstage – Meg Watson, Spotify

This is texturing TV. Hey guys. Thanks for the throw.

We're here with Meg Watson whose group product manager at Spotify and we're talking about backstage. The platform that has emerged as something of a de facto standard for creating developer portals and Cloud native environments Meg. Welcome the show.

Thanks for having me Mike. What is the backstory on the actual creation of this platform because I think a lot of people are familiar with it, but there may be not always familiar with what Spotify did to kind of bringing about and how did it wind up where we are today? Yeah, great question.

So backstage was created by a Spotify originally to really solve for some of the internal needs. We were facing so really and the spirit of navigating complexity, which I think so much of us can empathize with we really saw this our developers and our internal teams. We're struggling to navigate all of the different tools that we had internally as well as figuring out how to just be ultimately productive and able to innovate.

So what we strive to do back in 2018 when we were originally thinking about a tool like backstage was to figure out how might we work toward a single pain of class in which our developers and particular can really focus can have a space that is essentially providing Clarity around that complexity. So backstage has historically for Spotify provided a lot of speed. A lot of improved collaboration opportunity amongst our teams and that is also just really been a powerful tool for us with respect to developer satisfaction backstage was donated by Spotify to the cncf and 2020.

One of the things I think that got left behind in the rush the kubernetes was the developer experience. So you guys went out did something about that your cells. I'm other folks are not as fortunate.

What kind of productivity did you see increase once you started using this platform for the developers because one of the things we hear a lot about is developers are still someone intimidated by the platform and there's a lot of moving parts for them. So it's a great question one of the opportunity that we have seen best Stage solve is around productivity. And the way Spotify has really seen this show up is ultimately when we take a look at things like GitHub activity backstage is drawing a direct Improvement there in terms of the productivity that are developers are ultimately able to experience.

So we see that both in terms of GitHub activity as well as an ultimately shifting software to production. The other thing that I'd really call out as far as a value proposition that backstage uniquely offers is around satisfaction and retention of tech Talent. So we see that developers who are highly engaged with backstage our ultimately staying at Spotify longer.

And we also saw a really exciting piece of research research from the external community in which Toyota North American Motors actually did some understanding and some analysis around backstages impact inside their organization and they were able to see huge cost savings to the tune of 10 million dollars given backstages involvement inside their orc so it's not only showing up in terms of the experience the productivity but also ultimately the satisfaction and retention of really important Talent. So what's coming next for the platform? What should people be looking forward to so Spotify just hosted it's inaugural product roadmap a couple of days ago to share our webinar around what we were doing next and in there what we talked a lot about were our 2023 priorities which are ultimately removing barriers to adoption exploring new products and services evolving our platform and enhancing the core experience.

We're super excited to continue delivering value to all of our adopters that include Spotify internally our doctors in the open source community and now our commercial customers as well. In addition to sharing kind of those broad pillars around the product Vision that we're working toward. We also announced a couple of really key products that we're super super excited to launch publicly.

So the first of which is our Spotify Marketplace for backstage, so what we've learned is essentially we have a really vibrant open source Community plugins more than 100 and it's continuing to grow and have a ton of opportunity that has been delivered there. But still there's no easy way to understand of those plugins which are going to be well maintained our secure and ultimately able to be brought on to your organization. So our goal with launching this Spotify Marketplace for backstage is to make it easier to find what you need and ultimately have a secure and trusted place that you can go to to add new capabilities as your needs change.

The second big deliverable that we're really excited to release is around the fueling adoption space. So with quick start, but for backstage, which is a Spotify offering that we will work to release. We are making it easier than ever to get up and running with backstage which to your earlier point.

We know that it can sometimes be a little difficult to get started to know where to go while you're early on in your adoption Journey. So in making a tool like quick start what we're really doing is reducing the installation cost and then also making the maintenance cost lower in the Long Haul. So we're hoping that through both things like the marketplace and things like quick start that will really help throughout the different stages of the life cycle with backstage.

One of the things that I think we're seeing is that backstage is showing up integrated with other platforms. So is that part of the strategy where you make it easier for people to kind of find it? Yeah, so Spotify is really thinking deeply about the path forward for Partnerships for backstage.

And we totally recognize that we can build this in a way that is really deeply partnership oriented. So we're early on in some of those conversations but super excited to share more as we continue to develop there. Do you think as we go for that developers really want to be involved in the infrastructure?

They looking more for a devops team to kind of set that up for them and kind of take away the heavy lifting we've been talking about shift left forever, but it seems like developers just want to write code. Yeah, I think for us the way we think about the engineering culture at Spotify. The tools should work in the spirit of supporting how developers work how they organically want to in our most Innovative in their jobs.

So what we believe is that the tools should support that organic natural flow. Now, it's really it's always going to be super important that we're getting developer feedback reactively to improve the products that we've already shipped and then proactively to inform where we go and how we think about the next layer of products. We should be developing toward.

So I think it's a little bit of a push and a pull in that sense but really excited about the feedback loops we've been able to build internally and externally Do you think as we go along here that we might be on the cuspicy in an explosion of cloud native applications? Because I feel like every organization I talk to has a handful of clusters very few have a fleet of clusters but developers are starting to build more applications. So are we about to wake up one day and just see this massive number of applications starting to be deployed because they've been built over the last two years or so.

It's just taking a while to get through the pipeline. Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is the tool set is more diverse than it's ever been.

We're seeing people fragmented in so many different environments and really having to navigate across a super super diverse tool set. So ultimately the way that we think backstage can help is by providing a layer of clarity around all of that fragmentation. So my my vote on that one would be even so even if that happens, I think tools like backstage will really provide a ton of value to organizations and making sure that they're not lost in that translation.

You cannot walk down the street these days without so many talking about AI so is there a role for AI in the development here? What do you think that's going to play out to look like? Yeah, I think I think they're almost certainly is a really interesting story unfolding here with respect to Ai and productivity in general.

I mean across the entire the entire space. So while we don't totally have plans that we're super ready to share just yet. This is something we're thinking about as Spotify and I think no doubt.

We will continue to see huge pushes around the way that recommendations and particular can support us and not only enhancing the workflows that everybody is going down but also just ultimately contributing to productivity making sure that people are successful a lot faster. So I'm super excited about what we're gonna learn in this space and I'm optimistic that Spotify can help lead that Innovation for the developer portal World in particular. So ultimately what's your best advice to folks?

What do you know now that you wish you knew a year or two ago? You know, I think. That person but is too deeply deeply empathize with your users continue to think about the way that developers can inform product Direction and I think in particular with backstage we have we have really walked that walk and listening internally and externally to make sure that the products are ultimately meeting the needs of our users and can really grow with them as their needs of all over time.

So I would say if you haven't already give backstage a try and see if it holds weight there. But yeah, just continue to listen continue to treat developers as a first class citizen in your org. And I'm assuming you're looking for a contributors.

So how do I join this program? And you know what's involved and how much skill do I need to know? Yeah, absolutely.

So we have more than 5,000 contributors already within our backstage Community. io. And we have tons of different ways to get involved whether that be attending office hours joining us in Discord or starting to contribute.

There's documentation available to help you get started. All right, folks. I heard it here.

There's a lot more to Cloud native than just kubernetes and plenty of opportunities to contribute Meg. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me.

All right back to you guys in the studio.