GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
The GOTO podcast seeks out the brightest and boldest ideas from language creators and the world's leading experts in software development in the form of interviews and conference talks. Tune in to get the inspiration you need to bring in new technologies or gain extra evidence to support your software development plan.
GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
State of the Art of Platform Engineering • Abby Bangser & Charles Humble
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This interview was recorded for GOTO State of the Art in April 2026.
https://gotopia.tech
Read the full transcription of this interview here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/450
Abby Bangser - Principal Engineer at Syntasso & Team Topologies Advocate
Charles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & Consultant
RESOURCES
Abby
https://bsky.app/profile/abangser.bsky.social
https://twitter.com/a_bangser
https://github.com/abangser
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbybangser
https://www.syntasso.io/members-area/abby/profile
Charles
https://bsky.app/profile/charleshumble.bsky.social
https://linkedin.com/in/charleshumble
https://mastodon.social/@charleshumble
https://conissaunce.com
Links
https://blog.container-solutions.com/paula-kennedy-on-platform-team-responsibilities-patterns-and-anti-patterns
http://sites.libsyn.com/406853/syntasso-coo-paula-kennedy-on-platform-team-responsibilities-patterns-and-anti-patterns
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/platform-as-a/0642572243777
https://github.com/Cloud-Native-Platform-Engineering/cnpe-community/issues/79
https://www.kratix.io
https://leaddev.com/ai/nobody-knows-what-programming-will-look-like-in-two-years
https://leaddev.com/ai/shipping-faster-thinking-less-the-ai-code-verification-trap
https://www.cncf.io/blog/2023/11/20/announcing-the-platform-engineering-maturity-model
https://platformengineering.com/features/portals-and-pipelines-arent-enough-avoiding-the-platform-facade
DESCRIPTION
Abby Bangser opens with a clear-eyed status report on platform engineering: the concept of centralizing shared capabilities with self-service delivery is well understood, but the execution keeps going wrong in the same way. Organizations move from DevOps to platform engineering, but their platform teams end up becoming the new bottleneck — a centralized group drowning under the weight of the entire organization's requests, which is exactly what DevOps was supposed to fix. Abby traces this to an architectural problem: too many platforms are still built as centralized Terraform machines rather than as a marketplace of composable offerings. Her "platform as a product" test is blunt and useful: has the team ever said "no" to a feature request, or deprecated something?
If not, they don't have a product — they have a request queue.
The AI dimension is where the conversation gets most urgent. Abby's position is direct: AI agents are the new forcing function for platform maturity. The biggest misconception she wants to dismantle is the persistent equation of platform engineering with infrastructure-as-code: renaming your Terraform team doesn't count. Platform engineering is about building an experience — for human developers and increasingly for AI agents — that is self-service, compliant, and coherent at organizational scale. The Team Topologies model of interaction modes (from high-collaboration to fully automated on-demand APIs) gives a useful health check for where a platform actually sits on that maturity curve.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Chankramath, Cheneweth, Oliver & Alvarez • Effective Platform Engineering • https://amzn.to/3OnxN8i
Gregor Hohpe • Platform Strategy • https://amzn.to/4cxfYdb
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook
CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join
Looking for a unique learning experience?
Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!