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Internal Developer Portal
On-demand Webinar
On-demand Webinar

What to consider when building an IDP | Harness Resource | Harness

Is your development team bogged down by manual tasks? Or trapped in “TicketOps” to get basic needs filled? Does onboarding new developers and services take too long? Are your developers spending time hunting for documentation and hidden institutional knowledge?

As engineering complexity grows, developers increasingly struggle with scattered documentation, complex service dependencies, and repetitive operational tasks. Internal Developer Portals (IDPs) are reshaping the developer experience by providing centralized access to resources, automated workflows, and comprehensive service catalogs.

Once you’ve realized you need an Internal Developer Portal, the next big question is how do you get started? Do you buy one or build one? Starting out the wrong way can lead to failure.

This webinar will examine why that is. We’ll look at the essential capabilities of modern IDPs, from streamlining onboarding to eliminating "TicketOps" through self-service automation. Then we’ll dive into different approaches to building an IDP, comparing the popular Backstage framework with managed solutions and exploring aspects such as

  • Critical IDP capabilities to look for
  • Total cost of ownership for different approaches
  • Balancing flexibility with maintenance overhead
  • Ensuring adoption and measuring success
  • Planning for scale and governance

Key Take Aways:

  1. Modern IDP features can reduce cognitive load and accelerate software delivery
  2. Essential IDP capabilities that drive measurable improvements in developer productivity
  3. Critical factors to consider when choosing whether to build or buy an IDP solution

Published
January 1, 2024

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What you'll learn

Key Takeaways

Developer Burnout Drives the Need for IDPs

Over half of developers experience burnout and work an average of ten overtime days per month. Internal Developer Portals help retain talent and reduce the typical two-month onboarding period for new hires.

Centralized Access Eliminates Context Switching

IDPs consolidate technical knowledge from disparate tools into a single source of truth. They also provide self-service workflows that automate routine tasks and remove the need to wait on support tickets.

Backstage Is a Framework, Not a Complete IDP

Originally created by Spotify, Backstage provides the open-source tools to build a portal rather than an out-of-the-box solution. Organizations must weigh the high maintenance costs of self-managing it against purchasing a vendor solution.

Adopt a Developer-First Implementation Strategy

Successful IDP adoption requires focusing on developer effectiveness rather than just building a platform. Prioritizing the developer experience ensures the portal actually solves daily friction points.

Scorecards Automate Compliance and Production Readiness

Implementing scorecards provides immediate feedback on software maturity, security setups, and required library updates. This automated tracking helps organizations achieve compliance certifications and reduces production failure rates.