Build platform teams to remove coordination tax, not to recentralize decisions
Judge a platform team by the friction it removes for stream-aligned teams, not by how much it controls.
The move: treat the platform as a reusable service surface, not as a central queue. What healthy looks like A healthy platform packages common capabilities behind interfaces that stream-aligned teams can understand and consume. It reduces repeated explanation, not just repeated implementation. Why centralization creeps in Leaders often centralize because one platform manager looks efficient on paper while several product managers look redundant. But if routine product judgments move into the platform layer, visible control rises while hidden delay rises with it. What Conway predicts If every product change must cross the same platform queue, the architecture and planning rhythm…
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