A platform approach, often realized through an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), is designed to reduce the cognitive load on developers by abstracting away infrastructure complexity. Its primary benefit is providing a self-service experience where development teams can provision and manage the resources they need on demand. This is not a rigid, one-size-fits-all system; a well-designed platform offers curated "golden paths" and composable capabilities that cater to the diverse technical requirements of different applications. Simultaneously, it embeds organizational standards for security, compliance, and observability directly into the platform, ensuring governance is applied consistently without hindering developer velocity.

B. Platforms typically use shared infrastructure for efficiency and cost-effectiveness, providing logical isolation (e.g., namespaces) rather than complete physical isolation. The goal is not to avoid all shared resources.

C. This describes an anti-pattern. A key strength of a modern platform is its flexibility to support diverse application needs, not to force a single, rigid configuration on all teams.

D. While a platform centralizes the management of deployments, it often spans multiple environments (dev, test, prod) and clusters. The primary goal is developer enablement, not just centralized control.

1. Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). (2023). Platforms White Paper v1.0. CNCF Platforms Working Group.

Page 5

Section "What is a Platform?": "The platform is a collection of tools

services

and automated processes that enable developers to have a self-service experience when delivering their own applications." This directly supports the "self-service" aspect of option A.

Page 6

Section "Why Build a Platform?": "Platforms provide a curated experience for developers

offering a 'golden path' for building and deploying applications. This path incorporates organizational requirements for security

compliance

and performance..." This supports the "app-specific requirements" and "organizational standards" aspects of option A.

2. Kubernetes Documentation. Concepts > Cluster Architecture > Multi-tenancy.

The documentation explains how Kubernetes uses namespaces to create logically isolated virtual clusters backed by the same physical cluster. This supports the reasoning for why option B is incorrect

as the model is based on logical separation within a shared infrastructure

not complete isolation.

3. Skelton

M.

& Pais

M. (2019). Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. IT Revolution Press. (This foundational text is widely cited in academic and official platform engineering discourse).

Chapter 7

"Team API and Thinnest Viable Platform (TVP)": The concept of a "Thinnest Viable Platform" is introduced

emphasizing that a platform should provide just enough functionality to support developer needs without being overly prescriptive

thereby enabling diverse applications. This refutes the rigid approach described in option C.