Product for Platform Teams: Three Ways to Design for Adoption, Not Just Delivery
Bringing product thinking to internal platforms to drive real impact
TL;DR
Platform teams often struggle to apply product thinking, especially when they don’t own the end use cases that ultimately drive the value. But without a user-centric mindset, even the most technically sound platforms risk going unused. This article draws on my experience working with a Data Platform Team and dives into three areas of practical advice:
Start by understanding the problem: Understand your end users’ needs and goals, even if you’re not building their final product.
Build a community, not just a platform: Engage early adopters, create feedback loops, and foster shared ownership.
Measure enablement, not just delivery: Define success by how your platform unlocks value across the business.
If you want to realise the potential of your platform, treat it like a product!
Introduction
Platform teams often operate at an awkward intersection of technical enablement and product thinking. You’re responsible for building capabilities that others will use to build value, but you rarely own that value directly. In this grey area, it’s easy to drift into a mindset where shipping is success and adoption is someone else’s problem.
We’ve all seen it happen, where beautifully architected platforms sit unused after launch. Why? Because they weren’t built for anyone. There was no real product mindset applied. No clear understanding of who the users were, what they needed, or how they worked.
So, how to overcome this challenge?
Based on experience working with Data Platform teams, here are three ways to apply product thinking to platform work, with practical steps we used that you can apply, too.
1. Start by Understanding the Problem
Just because your team won’t build the final user-facing application, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to understand the problems it will solve and the use cases it will deliver. In fact, it’s essential.
Why this matters:
If you build in a vacuum, you’ll make the wrong trade-offs. The result will be a technically sound platform that doesn’t meet the needs of the people it was meant to empower.
Steps to apply this:
Map the ecosystem of potential users.
Identify the different personas who might use or benefit from the platform, even indirectly. For example: data analysts, management teams, sales, BI developers, marketeers, and finance teams.Conduct discovery interviews with actual users.
Sit with people. Watch how they work today. Don’t talk about your platform, ask about their challenges. Where do they lose time? What decisions are they making with (or without) data? What opportunities would having access to the right data unlock? What are they worth?Extract common pain points and workflows.
Look for repeated themes: slow or limited data access, inconsistent definitions, manual reporting. Use these to shape your early backlog, so you're solving real problems from the start.Design for use, not just access.
It’s not enough to “make data available.” Think about how users interact with data. What does it need to look like? How will they explore it? Do they have the skills required to interrogate the data and make decisions off the back of it?
2. Build a Community, Not Just a Platform
For your platform to make real impact, you don’t just need adoption - you need advocacy. The best way to achieve this is by creating a sense of shared ownership early on.
Why this matters:
If users feel like something is being done to them, they resist. If they feel part of something being built for and with them, they engage.
Steps to apply this:
Identify and onboard “platform champions.”
Find data-savvy users across different business units who are well-respected by peers. Invite them to join a working group or council, something with a name, structure, and purpose.Create regular feedback loops.
Hold monthly calls, workshops, or drop-in sessions. Show what’s being worked on, ask for input, and be transparent about trade-offs. Make it easy for them to speak up.Celebrate contributions publicly.
If someone helps shape a feature or improves a data model, highlight that in internal comms or all-hands. Recognition builds momentum and reinforces shared ownership.Offer early access and co-creation opportunities.
Let champions test features before broad release. Use their feedback to refine your product and build trust. People support what they help shape.Invest in enablement, not just access.
Run “data hours,” share documentation in plain English, and hold demo days. Your platform isn’t intuitive to everyone by default - you have to teach people to use it well.
3. Measure Success in Terms of Enablement, Not Just Delivery
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, but traditional product metrics (like NPS or DAUs) don’t always apply cleanly to platform teams.
Why this matters:
If your success is defined by “we shipped the data model,” you’ll lose sight of whether anyone’s actually using or benefiting from it.
Steps to apply this:
Define “enablement” metrics that reflect downstream impact.
What would success look like if the platform is working well? Time-to-insight? Reuse of standard models? % of queries run on self-serve tools? Build those into your KPIs.Instrument the platform from day one.
Track adoption of features, frequency of use, user types, and how usage patterns change over time. Pair quantitative data with qualitative interviews to get the full picture.Connect platform usage to business outcomes.
Try to show how enabling the business to act on data faster led to reduced costs, better decisions, or faster product launches, even if your team didn’t build those things directly. Celebrate these wins with your team and community!Use metrics to shape and evolve your roadmap.
If a feature isn’t being used, dig in. Why not? If one team is over-performing, learn from them. Use data not just to prove value, but to increase it over time.
Summary
Product thinking isn’t just for consumer apps and SaaS products. Platform teams can, and should, adopt product principles to avoid building beautiful infrastructure that no one uses. Understand your users, build a community, and measure impact to build lasting engagement.
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