Backstage is often proposed as the solution to all platform problems. Just deploy it and watch the magic happen. Too good to be true? Exactly. Let's take a step back: which problems are you actually trying to solve? Service discovery? Onboarding? Tool sprawl? Documentation chaos? Your problems are unique. Just as the metrics for your developer portal should be.

A Developer Portal without a purpose is only just another piece of software, causing toil and maintenance effort. In this talk, we'll show you how to apply a product mindset to your platform (and Backstage): starting with identifying the specific problems you want to solve before implementing Backstage, define metrics for those problems, and measure whether Backstage actually delivers value and how it can be improved. Think DORA metrics, but for your internal developer portal.

We’ll equip you with a framework to validate your platform decisions with data, whether you're considering Backstage or already running it in production.