Report
Autopsy #003 — Platform friction masked as DevOps issues
Published: October 10, 2024
Symptom
Teams blamed tooling. Releases slowed.
Context
- Team size: 18
- Stage: Growth
- Stack: Microservices, AWS
- Domain: SaaS platform
What they thought the problem was
Infrastructure complexity.
What the autopsy found
- →Platform team lacked mandate
- →Interfaces were undocumented
- →Ownership boundaries were unclear
Early warning signs they missed
- →Workarounds became normalized
- →Teams avoided touching shared systems
- →"We'll fix it later" became policy
Outcome
Autopsy declined. Team wanted solutions before diagnosis.