IDP: Make the Right Path the Easy One

Mikhail Trifonov leads engineering in a Cloud.ru department and serves as Head of Development; he curates IDP for CTO Conf. With Alexander, he traces internal platforms from Borg and Omega through Kubernetes, Backstage, and modern platform engineering.

Microservices moved complexity into distributed infrastructure. An IDP gives engineers a simpler journey: a declarative specification provisions runtime, databases, queues, observability, and security through self-service. Centralization costs time at first, but eventually removes the recurring tax of bespoke tooling from product teams.

Platform success is not measured by feature count. DORA and SPACE connect delivery speed with reliability, developer satisfaction, service ownership, and complete user journeys. Telemetry and surveys reveal where engineers leave the golden path, while a product mindset keeps a platform team from retreating into technology for its own sake.

A separate section covers AI assistance for test cases, access audits, and changing operational metrics. The final IDP map spans a portal and APIs, CI/CD, artifacts, runtime, data, messaging, identity, and secrets. The practical conclusion is to start with the most painful journey and expand before accumulated inconsistency makes adoption too expensive.