--- title: Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform... description: Wehkamp, a Dutch e-commerce company, shares a case study on evolving its internal developer platform over roughly a decade, moving from ad-hoc zero-handoff... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform Your Organization Actually Needs | daily.dev og:description: Wehkamp, a Dutch e-commerce company, shares a case study on evolving its internal developer platform over roughly a decade, moving from ad-hoc zero-handoff... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/FTnDX9EO2.png og:image:alt: Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform Your Organization Actually Needs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform Your Organization Actually Needs **[InfoQ](https://daily.dev/sources/infoq)** · 17 min read · 2 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Wehkamp, a Dutch e-commerce company, shares a case study on evolving its internal developer platform over roughly a decade, moving from ad-hoc zero-handoff container deployments to a structured platform engineering approach. The narrative covers early growing pains from lack of abstractions, the shift to self-service infrastructure via chatbots and Atlantis/Terraform automation, a governance model splitting resources into consume-only vs multiparty categories, and the eventual realization that a full Backstage-style developer portal was more overhead than value. The piece argues platform teams should rightsize scope to organizational needs, favoring opinionated golden paths with escape hatches over trying to build comprehensive, feature-complete platforms. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the difference between consume-only and multiparty governance models in platform engineering? Consume-only resources are things a service owner builds with but never needs to define themselves, such as public cloud infrastructure or observability systems. Multiparty resources cover crosscutting concerns like messaging and traffic that require direct involvement from all participants following the same rules, such as Kafka topics and messages, while the brokers and storage remain consume-only. _Teams weighing how to govern shared infrastructure can compare real-world platform engineering models like this on daily.dev._ ### Why did attempts to implement Backstage as an internal developer portal fail at some organizations? Backstage upkeep ended up resembling previous ops-driven sprints because a successful outcome depended on other teams collaborating and contributing their own additions and maintenance capacity, which wasn't feasible. The realization was that pushing changes and working autonomously didn't always require a full internal developer portal, and could be achieved with simpler tools and practices instead. _Anyone deciding whether Backstage fits their org can weigh this kind of adoption experience on daily.dev._ ### How does using Atlantis with Terraform enable self-service infrastructure provisioning? Atlantis reacts to an opened pull request containing preconfigured Terraform modules and plans the changes, then automatically applies and merges them into the main branch if successful, giving users their resources in about a minute. This reduces implementation variation and common defects like missing lifecycle policies or mismatched tags compared to manual Terraform runs. _Engineers building self-service infrastructure workflows can find more Terraform and Atlantis patterns on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@rizzdev** · 0 upvotes > Teams writing their own terraform PRs against a shared module registry plus policy checks for tagging, access, and deprovisioning still land the Atlantis plan/apply in about a minute. Golden paths plus apply-or-explain scale to 100 a day on that PR path, and consume-only vs multiparty stays in the review ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Shifting Platform Development from Projects to Products](https://daily.dev/posts/shifting-platform-development-from-projects-to-products-kudpizdug) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Platform Engineering at scale: Lessons from the conference circuit](https://daily.dev/posts/platform-engineering-at-scale-lessons-from-the-conference-circuit-ucb3ep9ps) · OctopusDeploy · 7 upvotes · 0 comments - [8 platform engineering anti-patterns](https://daily.dev/posts/8-platform-engineering-anti-patterns-hdjhwze8h) · InfoWorld · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [How To Spend More Time On Platform Development & Less On Dev Support](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-spend-more-time-on-platform-development-less-on-dev-support-pzgk8mefv) · Fairwinds Blog · 2 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#terraform](https://daily.dev/tags/terraform), [#platform-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/platform-engineering), [#internal-developer-platform](https://daily.dev/tags/internal-developer-platform) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform Your Organization Actually Needs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2"},"datePublished":"2026-08-24T11:00:35.858Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:21:07.016Z","description":"Wehkamp, a Dutch e-commerce company, shares a case study on evolving its internal developer platform over roughly a decade, moving from ad-hoc zero-handoff...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1041102e7dea0cc220e28fbe5b5266e9?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1041102e7dea0cc220e28fbe5b5266e9?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"InfoQ","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"InfoQ","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/afc3bced3e1e4b188dd9127017a60e0c","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/infoq"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"devops,kubernetes,terraform,platform-engineering,internal-developer-platform","timeRequired":"PT17M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"InfoQ","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/infoq"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Rightsizing Platform Engineering: Building the Platform Your Organization Actually Needs"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Teams writing their own terraform PRs against a shared module registry plus policy checks for tagging, access, and deprovisioning still land the Atlantis plan/apply in about a minute. Golden paths plus apply-or-explain scale to 100 a day on that PR path, and consume-only vs multiparty stays in the review","datePublished":"2026-08-24T11:53:09.351Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/FTnDX9EO2#c-aIUOwGjIg","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrew","url":"https://daily.dev/rizzdev","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--35vRfXAA--/f_auto/v1785413727/avatars/avatar_fQ7ttCKtPuu6tDvcgQXv5?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rightsizing-platform-engineering-building-the-platform-your-organization-actually-needs-ftndx9eo2#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the difference between consume-only and multiparty governance models in platform engineering?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Consume-only resources are things a service owner builds with but never needs to define themselves, such as public cloud infrastructure or observability systems. Multiparty resources cover crosscutting concerns like messaging and traffic that require direct involvement from all participants following the same rules, such as Kafka topics and messages, while the brokers and storage remain consume-only. Teams weighing how to govern shared infrastructure can compare real-world platform engineering models like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did attempts to implement Backstage as an internal developer portal fail at some organizations?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Backstage upkeep ended up resembling previous ops-driven sprints because a successful outcome depended on other teams collaborating and contributing their own additions and maintenance capacity, which wasn't feasible. The realization was that pushing changes and working autonomously didn't always require a full internal developer portal, and could be achieved with simpler tools and practices instead. Anyone deciding whether Backstage fits their org can weigh this kind of adoption experience on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How does using Atlantis with Terraform enable self-service infrastructure provisioning?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Atlantis reacts to an opened pull request containing preconfigured Terraform modules and plans the changes, then automatically applies and merges them into the main branch if successful, giving users their resources in about a minute. This reduces implementation variation and common defects like missing lifecycle policies or mismatched tags compared to manual Terraform runs. Engineers building self-service infrastructure workflows can find more Terraform and Atlantis patterns on daily.dev."}}]} ```