When building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), it’s tempting to imagine a sleek, unified subway metro system, perfectly ordered and coordinated. Tracks in straight lines, trains traveling at the same incredible speed, arriving perfectly on schedule at their appropriate destination.
The reality is much messier.
IDPs, like subway systems, are complex, and consist of teams (or trains) that are all operating at different levels. Some teams are old steam engines just getting warmed up. Others are already high-speed bullet trains nearing their destination. And many are stuck between stations, juggling competing priorities and technical debt. This is the real landscape we build for, and it’s why SmoothGlue™ exists.
At any given moment, development, platform engineering, and security teams are each on their own journey. They’re moving at different speeds, starting from different places, and often aiming for different destinations.
Development teams might just be emerging from the chaos of manual CI/CD pipelines, scattered YAML files, and inconsistent testing. Their focus is to ship faster with fewer surprises.
Platform engineering teams are usually a bit further down the road. They’re building paved paths, standing up self-service portals, and creating reusable infrastructure patterns to bring order to the chaos.
Security teams, on the other hand, often have the guardrails in place. They know what “compliant” looks like, but the real challenge is integrating into the software delivery flow without grinding it to a halt.
This divergence of maturity, context, and velocity is why it’s risky to treat every team like they’re on the same track or timetable.
The core mistake many platform initiatives make is assuming uniformity: that every team will adopt the same interface, follow the same pipeline, or need the same automation from day one. But when you zoom out, you realize that Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) aren’t highways. They’re rail networks, with multiple trains moving at different speeds, carrying different cargo, and needing different kinds of support.
If you build a platform for the fastest train, the others will derail. If you build for the slowest, the fast ones look for tracks elsewhere. That’s where empathy meets architecture.
With SmoothGlue, we didn’t set out to build just another IDP with a fixed set of tools. We built a routing system that adapts to where each team is starting from and helps them travel smarter, not just faster.
Instead of forcing teams into a fixed toolchain or workflow, we enable something more flexible: progressive enablement. That means you can start where you are. No need to replatform your whole brain just to get going. Maybe that’s running manual scripts or gradually moving toward full GitOps.
We’re thoughtful about how SmoothGlue shows up for different users. Context-aware interfaces give developers a streamlined experience with what they need. Platform engineers get the controls and observability they want. Security teams get audit trails, policy enforcement, and the compliance signals they need to sleep at night.
In the end, SmoothGlue doesn’t assume a single, prescriptive path. It supports many journeys, all converging toward the same outcome: faster, safer, frictionless delivery.
Platform engineering isn’t about laying down rigid tracks. It’s about acting as conductors, helping teams reach their goals safely and efficiently, whether they’re on a diesel engine or a maglev. That means meeting teams where they are, guiding them to where they could be, and measuring progress in terms of outcomes, not compliance.
If you’re building a developer platform or trying to adopt one, start by establishing where each of your trains begin, looking at each of your teams individually. From there you can decide how to support them on today's minimum viable journey.
“Where is each team starting from, and what’s the minimum viable journey I can support for them today?”
The best platforms don’t move teams the same way. They move them forward, each at their own pace, on tracks that converge over time. SmoothGlue was built with this reality in mind. If you're tired of platforms that assume uniformity and punish variance, maybe it's time to board a new kind of train.
Docs-as-Code: Automating Documentation for User-Centric Experiences
Our Docs-as-Code initiative is built on a simple principle: treat documentation as a living, breathing part of the development process.
BrainGu Promotes Jamil Jadallah to Vice President of Product
Jamil's experience building scalable platforms, combined with his clear focus on the developer journey, makes him the perfect leader to advance our vision for a product-led future and to drive the next era of growth.
Empowering our users with more tools at their disposal...
Our customer’s missions are growing in complexity each day, and we continuously evaluate and add new tools to our platform to meet those customer’s needs.