Chapter 3 (Bonus): Think PLG, internally
“Product-led growth (PLG) is a business methodology in which user acquisition, expansion, conversion, and retention are all driven primarily by the product itself. It creates company-wide alignment across teams — from engineering to sales and marketing — around the product as the largest source of sustainable, scalable business growth.” (Source: https://www.productled.org/).
Platform led growth can be done in many ways, here are some tips that will help you increase developer usage quickly and also grow the platform correctly.
Maximum accessibility to the platform:
- Allow developers to use the features/tools they want immediately, without the need for hard integration, registrations, formal meetings, approvals, etc.
- Allow developers to see your code, the Pull-Requests, and even contribute to your code. This will allow them a deep understanding of the tools they use and will also allow them to be aware of the capabilities you provide and they can consume from you.
DevEx:
- Reach the users from the tools they love, like GitHub, VSCode, so on.
- Write documentation and guides in their language. Do not use terms that are only familiar to you, and not to them, that will make it difficult for them to understand and cause frustration.
“Continuous platforming”:
- Continue to plan and build the platform according the developers’ feedbacks, usage and requirements — it will help you to fit the platform exactly to the development needs in the organization.
When the developers realize that the platform provides them full independence and power while significantly streamlining their work, they will already want to use the platform themselves and even want to be partners in the platform build.
And this is where the short series of articles for beginners on the platform comes to an end.
Later, I will publish more technical explanations and implementation guides that will help you in the construction itself.
Enjoy your platform building!
