Platform Engineering is booming in mindshare, with almost every engineering org starting platform teams or discovering they already have them, albeit using different names. As the practice matures, platform teams increasingly find they need to measure impact for their work, track long-lasting effects, and convince budget owners with compelling ROI.

A common first go-to for this are the well known DORA metrics. These can help with an initial peek into measuring platform success. However, they are not enough to cover complex cases, and converting the DORA numbers to ROI and dollars is far from easy.

I this talk we lay out a language and methodology for measuring platform impact around three key pillars: adoption, impact, and risk. We suggest an approach for defining KPIs to track during and after implementation.

Finally, we show how to translate key engineering metrics into developer time savings and ultimately $ value amounts - enabling true ROI conversations with budget owners.