What Golden Paths Are#

A golden path is a pre-built, opinionated workflow that gets a developer from zero to a production-ready artifact with minimal decisions. The term comes from Spotify’s internal platform work. Netflix calls them “paved roads.” The idea is the same: provide a well-maintained, well-tested default path that handles 80% of use cases, while allowing teams to go off-road when they have legitimate reasons.

A golden path is not a mandate. It is a recommendation backed by automation. Create a new Go microservice using the golden path and you get a repository with CI/CD, Kubernetes manifests, observability, and a Backstage catalog entry — working in minutes. The golden path removes the 40+ decisions a developer would otherwise need to make.

Why the Operating Model Matters#

The platform team’s operating model determines whether the platform becomes a force multiplier or a bottleneck. A ticket-driven, gatekeeper-oriented team produces a platform developers route around. A product-oriented, self-service team produces a platform developers adopt voluntarily. Organizational structure shapes developer experience more than technology choices.

Team Topologies and Interaction Modes#

The Team Topologies framework (Skelton & Pais) defines four team types relevant to platform engineering:

The Cost of Not Having Self-Service#

A developer needs a PostgreSQL database. They file a ticket. It sits in a backlog for two days. A DBA provisions it, sends credentials via Slack DM. Elapsed time: 3 days. Actual need: 5 minutes of configuration. Multiply across every database, cache, queue, and namespace, and manual provisioning becomes the single largest drag on velocity. Self-service lets developers provision pre-approved resources directly, within guardrails the platform team defines.

Why a Maturity Model#

Platform engineering investments fail when organizations skip levels. A team that cannot maintain shared Terraform modules reliably has no business building a self-service portal. The maturity model provides an honest assessment of where you are and what must be true before advancing.

This is not a five-year roadmap. Some organizations reach Level 2 and stay there — it serves their needs. The model helps you identify what level you need, what level you are at, and what is blocking progress.

Two Approaches to the Same Problem#

Both Port and Backstage solve the same core problem: giving developers a single interface to discover services, provision infrastructure, and understand the operational state of their systems. They take fundamentally different approaches to getting there.

Backstage is an open-source framework (CNCF Incubating) originally built by Spotify. You deploy and operate it yourself. It provides a plugin architecture and core primitives — you build the portal your organization needs by assembling and configuring plugins.

The Problem Self-Service Solves#

Developers need infrastructure: databases, caches, message queues, storage buckets, DNS records. In most organizations, getting these means filing a ticket, waiting days for someone to provision, and receiving credentials in a Slack DM. This bottleneck incentivizes workarounds — manual console provisioning, skipped security configs, everything crammed into shared databases.

Self-service infrastructure lets developers provision what they need directly, within guardrails the platform team defines. Choose a resource from a catalog, fill in parameters, and the system provisions it and returns connection details. No tickets, no waiting.