An internal platform is designed to reduce developers' cognitive load by creating an abstraction layer over complex infrastructure and tooling. It provides a curated, self-service experience, often called a "paved road," which hides the intricate details of cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and observability stacks. By offering simplified interfaces and standardized workflows, the platform enables developers to focus on writing application code and delivering business value, rather than spending mental effort on understanding and managing the underlying operational complexities. This abstraction is a core principle of platform engineering.

A. An internal platform's primary purpose is to change how developers interact with infrastructure, which directly and intentionally impacts their cognitive load, making this option incorrect.

C. This describes the opposite of a platform's function. A platform team absorbs operational complexity to reduce the burden on developers, not shift it entirely onto them.

D. The goal of a platform is abstraction, meaning developers do not need to know all underlying tools. They only need to interact with the platform's simplified interface.

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

Section 2

"What are Platforms?"

Page 5: "Platforms codify and simplify the complexities of a given technical domain

reducing the cognitive load on users."

Section 3

"Why Build a Platform?"

Page 6: "Reduce cognitive load on developers: By providing a curated set of tools and capabilities

platforms can reduce the cognitive load on developers

allowing them to focus on delivering value to the business."

2. Google Cloud. (n.d.). What is an internal developer platform (IDP)?. Google Cloud Documentation.

Section: "Benefits of an internal developer platform": "Reduce cognitive load: An IDP abstracts away the complexity of the underlying infrastructure

so developers don't have to be experts in every tool and technology. This frees them up to focus on what they do best: writing code."

3. Skelton

M.

& Pais

M. (2019). Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. IT Revolution Press.

Chapter 7

"Platform Team

" Page 113: The book explains that a platform's purpose is to "enable stream-aligned teams to deliver work with substantial autonomy." A key enabler for this is that "The stream-aligned team has a reduced cognitive load."