“When we build our state-of-the-art IT hosting platform it will use automation for everything.”
— A Danish IT manager of an inhouse enterprise software project
Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? But what does it actually mean? Sure, everyone loves the idea of automation and orchestration—it sounds modern, efficient, and very buzzword-friendly. But here’s the thing: if you don’t know who you’re building for or what problems you’re solving, automation and orchestration are just expensive toys.
Because, let’s be honest—what’s the plan here? “Use automation for everything” is not a strategy; it’s the IT equivalent of saying, “Just add AI.” It sounds impressive on a slide deck, but when it hits the ground, the results are about as coherent as your last late-night Miro board.
As we’d explain, the ambition shouldn’t just be about having orchestration and automation. It’s about building a platform that works, you need a product mindset:
- A platform that can be easily used by the users.
- A platform that can be easily maintained and developed by the operators or platform engineers.
Or, to put it bluntly: build something that doesn’t make your consumers hate you.
Automation - The Taskmaster
Automation is the taskmaster of IT. It’s like a well-trained factory worker:
- Give it a task—provisioning a virtual machine, deploying a container—and it’ll execute it perfectly, every time.
- It’s repeatable, scalable, and great at reducing human error.
But here’s the catch: automation doesn’t think about the bigger picture. Great for the team who has created the automation, but it doesn’t inherently tie into broader goals like customer satisfaction or time-to-market improvements.
Orchestration: The Conductor
Orchestration takes automation to the next level. It’s the conductor in a symphony:
- It coordinates multiple automated tasks to achieve a larger objective.
- It ensures the violins, cellos, and drums play together to create music, not chaos.
The orchestrator does the conduction of the tasks. You could think of it as the conductor of an orchestra. It’s not just about ensuring the violins and cellos play their parts; it’s about making sure they play together to produce a symphony. Orchestration coordinates multiple automated tasks, aligning them to achieve a larger objective. But here’s the tricky part: orchestration is only as good as its audience. Without clear goals or users, it’s like composing a beautiful symphony and locking it away.
But here’s the tricky part: orchestration without purpose is like composing a symphony and locking it in a vault. Sure, it’s technically impressive, but if no one hears it—or worse, if no one wanted it—it’s just noise.
But Wait—Who’s Using This? Self-Service for the Win!
Orchestration without APIs or self-service tools is like building a Tesla factory and forgetting to sell the cars. To deliver value—especially in modern platform engineering—you need APIs and self-service capabilities that are designed for real users, not some hypothetical personas in a PowerPoint deck.
That doesn’t mean building a massive, over-engineered API monster with every bell and whistle imaginable. Start small. Talk to your users—whether they’re developers, data scientists, or other teams, observe how they work and where the low hanging fruits are in terms of automation—and figure out what they actually need and give it to them in small increments working towards that well orchestrated symphone slowly.
Solve specific problems. Get feedback. Reflect. Then scale your orchestration and automation based on what works. Yes, this also applies to other teams within your organization. You can’t build meaningful services or reduce toil if you don’t know what the problems are.
Conclusion: The Product Mindset
So, does this mean you’re guaranteed success if you automate and orchestrate everything? Not quite. To truly build a platform that delivers value, ask refelct on these points:
- Focus on outcomes, not tasks: Orchestration isn’t about automating infrastructure; it’s about enabling teams to deliver value faster.
- Iterate based on user needs: Treat the platform like a product—collect feedback, measure impact, and refine continuously.
- Prioritize usability: APIs and self-service tools must be intuitive, well-documented, and designed with the user in mind.
If you can answer “yes” to these, congratulations—you’re on your way to building a platform that doesn’t just work, but works well.
And if you’ve implemented a self-service platform, I’d love to hear how you did it—do reach out!!