Most of the large, traditional, businesses we encounter today feel like their market share is under threat from smaller, more nimble, purely digital competitors. These digital companies are able to continuously experiment and roll out new products and services at an accelerating pace. Even though traditional businesses have the advantage of better customer relationships, more efficient processes and deeper market knowledge, they struggle to become responsive and customer-led. Delivering new features involves scattering change across a complex organisational and IT landscape through laboriously planned and orchestrated programmes of work. In an effort to unlock their existing corporate assets, large organisations are now looking to implement “platforms” that allow them to consolidate and simplify shared capabilities and deliver to customers faster. But what are the characteristics of a good platform?

In this talk, we’ll introduce the concept of a digital platform - a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support arranged as compelling internal products. A well-constructed digital platform can accelerate digital product delivery by reducing dependencies and friction between teams and making it easier to access the core business capabilities of your organisation. Using real-world examples, we’ll describe some key characteristics for success, with particular attention to the importance of managing the platform as an internal product.