What is an internal developer portal (and why do you need one)?

Are you spinning plates, juggling mismatched tools and tangled workflows while sprinting through the Wild West of software development?

We hear you.

It’s a struggle many product teams face as they work to accelerate digital transformation.

But here’s the kicker: setting up an internal developer portal (especially a self-service one) can be your secret weapon. Picture it as your digital Sherpa, guiding you to perfect consistency and turning that cloud, agile, and DevOps chaos into a gloriously coordinated dance.

So, what is an internal developer portal (IDP)?

Quick summary:

• Audience: Internal development teams within an organization.
• Purpose: Streamline internal development processes, improve developer productivity, and ensure consistency across teams. It provides self-service capabilities, tools, and resources needed for the entire software development lifecycle within the organization.
• Features include:
  • Internal documentation and knowledge bases.
  • Self-service environment provisioning.
  • CI/CD pipelines and automation tools.
  • Access to internal APIs and services.
  • Collaboration tools and team management features.
  • Governance, compliance, and security tools.

Key differences between an external developer portal and an internal developer portal:

1. Audience:

• Developer portal: External developers.

• Internal Developer Portal: Internal development teams.

2. Purpose:

• Developer portal: Facilitate external integrations and usage of APIs.

• Internal Developer Portal: Enhance internal development workflows and productivity.

3. Features:

• Developer portal: Focuses on accessibility and usability for external users.

• Internal Developer Portal: Focuses on internal efficiency, governance, and collaboration.

This quote by Manjunath Bhat, Research VP, Software Engineering Practice at Gartner®, explains it well. In his 2022 report, “A Software Engineering Leader’s Guide to Improving Developer Experience,” he stated that “Internal developer portals serve as the interface through which developers can discover and access internal developer platform capabilities.”

Gartner defines internal developer portals as tools that enable self-service discovery, automation, and access to reusable components, tools, platform services, and knowledge assets in modern software development environments.

These portals are designed to enhance developer experience and service reliability while enabling centralized governance and shared visibility across multiple teams. Key capabilities include service and resource catalogs, scorecards to benchmark software quality and security, scaffolding templates for building new components, and plug-ins for integrating with platform services.

Platform engineering teams provide the portal to product development teams either as a stand-alone application or as integral components of DevOps platforms and broader internal developer platforms.

According to the Gartner report “Innovation Insight for Internal Developer Portals”, by 2025, 75% of organizations with platform teams will provide self-service developer portals to improve the developer experience and accelerate product innovation.

Internal developer portals significantly enhance the developer experience by reducing friction throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

These portals streamline the development, deployment, and lifecycle management of software artifacts, integrating with delivery platforms to enable continuous delivery and automate infrastructure tasks. By incorporating documentation tools, source code, and artifact repositories, developer portals facilitate the adoption and scaling of inner source practices.

They also support continuous operations by providing access to a toolbox with plugins for automation, monitoring, and incident management, serving as a one-stop shop for product and platform teams to track visibility and ownership of services and components.

The primary characteristics of internal developer portals include abstraction, developer-centric views, and a pluggable framework. Abstraction removes underlying complexities across various technology layers, such as data, applications, open-source libraries, programming languages, and infrastructure.

A developer-centric view offers visibility throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from ideation to operations. Lastly, a pluggable framework enables the extension of the portal through plugins or APIs, allowing developers to customize the portal to meet their specific needs.

The benefits of using an internal developer portal

Internal developer portals enable software engineers to focus on delivering innovative software and delighting customers by improving the flow throughout the software delivery lifecycle. These portals help streamline complex workflows and remove unnecessary overhead and tool complexity, thus boosting developer productivity and satisfaction.

1. Improved developer experience

Developer portals make life significantly easier for developers by providing a centralized platform for accessing tools, documentation, and resources. In modern software development environments, engineers no longer have to spend valuable time hunting down disparate resources scattered across multiple systems.

A centralized portal allows developers to quickly find the software packages, CI/CD tools, development and test environments, and other resources they need, thereby streamlining their daily operations. By creating an organized and user-friendly interface, developer portals reduce friction in development activities, enabling engineers to focus on writing code, solving problems, and building innovative solutions.

This self-service access to essential resources promotes a smoother software development lifecycle (SDLC), ensuring developers can work more efficiently and productively.

2. Time and cost efficiency

By streamlining processes and reducing the need for redundant tools, developer portals save significant amounts of time and reduce overall project costs. The unification of tools and resources within a single platform eliminates the inefficiencies associated with managing multiple, fragmented systems. This consolidation not only reduces overhead but also minimizes the learning curve for developers who no longer need to familiarize themselves with numerous separate tools. Moreover, with automated workflows and preapproved software packages, teams can expedite their development processes, shortening lead times dramatically.

Product owners benefit as well, as they receive continuous feedback from production systems, enabling rapid iteration and improvement of features. This holistic approach minimizes delays and accelerates time-to-market, ultimately driving business innovation and increasing the return on investment.

3. Enhanced productivity

With organized workflows and easy access to necessary resources, developer portals boost team productivity and efficiency. The portals facilitate a uniform experience tailored to each user’s role, whether they are developers, product owners, or SREs (Site Reliability Engineers).

For instance, innersource practices integrated into the portal allow developers to easily learn about and contribute to various software projects within their organization, enhancing collaboration and knowledge sharing. This creates a hub where teams can share reusable code, services, and APIs, fostering a more collaborative and innovative culture.

According to Melinda Malmgren from the American Airlines Developer Experience Group, shifting to a self-service model significantly boosted their internal marketplace, enabling engineers to easily innersource their code.

Moreover, efficient discovery and visualization of services through the portal minimize the time needed to resolve incidents. By providing consistent visibility into service interdependencies and ownership, developer portals enable SREs, product, and operations teams to support a continuously expanding digital footprint.

This visibility, coupled with integration with automation, monitoring, and incident response tools, empowers product teams to ensure the reliability and resilience of production environments.

4. Accelerate cloud adoption and drive business innovation with adaptive governance

Development and operations teams often face a tug-of-war between autonomy, agility, and the necessity for robust governance and control. Developer portals help resolve this conflict by codifying necessary security, cost, and compliance policies for managing cloud infrastructure. Using standardized templates and blueprints available within the portal, product teams can consume cloud services in a governed yet flexible manner. This approach enables an adaptive governance model, balancing the need for speed and innovation with the imperative for control and compliance.

It’s crucial to remember that developer portals are not turnkey solutions. They must be carefully configured and integrated with existing tools and systems to be effective. Many platform providers, such as those mentioned in the research, offer pre-integrated capabilities, plugins, and add-ons that simplify the building of internal developer portals, eliminating the need to create integrations from scratch.

It’s also important not to confuse internal developer portals with API developer portals. While the latter often form part of API management platforms, internal developer portals integrate with these platforms, offering a broader remit that spans the entire software delivery lifecycle.

By improving developer experience and effectiveness, enabling adaptive cloud governance, and fostering continuous enhancement through a dedicated platform owner, organizations can leverage developer portals to significantly streamline software development, deployment, and operations. This strategic approach not only boosts productivity and efficiency but also drives innovation and business growth.

How to build an effective internal developer portal

Building an effective developer portal requires a thoughtful approach that prioritizes the needs and preferences of the target users.

Here are some essential steps to ensure your developer portal is both engaging and functional:

• Understand your audience: The first step in creating a successful developer portal is to understand your target developers’ needs and preferences. Conduct thorough research to identify the challenges they face and the tools and resources they require. By understanding their workflows, pain points, and goals, you can design a portal that provides real value and enhances their overall developer experience. Tailoring the portal to meet the specific needs of your audience ensures higher engagement and satisfaction.

• User-friendly interface: An intuitive and user-friendly design is crucial for the success of a developer portal. Developers should be able to navigate the portal effortlessly, find the resources they need, and complete tasks without frustration. This requires a clean, well-organized layout and easy-to-use navigation menus. Consider incorporating search functionality and categorizing resources logically to make information retrieval quick and efficient. A seamless user experience encourages regular use of the portal and boosts productivity.

• Regular updates: Keeping the developer portal up-to-date with the latest information, tools, and technologies is vital for maintaining its relevance and effectiveness. Regular updates ensure that developers always have access to the most current resources, best practices, and new features. Establish a schedule for reviewing and updating the portal’s content, and stay informed about industry trends and advancements. Keeping the portal fresh and relevant not only enhances its utility but also demonstrates a commitment to supporting the developer community.

• Feedback mechanism: Implementing a robust feedback mechanism is essential for continuous improvement of the developer portal. Provide developers with easy-to-use tools for submitting feedback, such as surveys, feedback forms, or dedicated feedback sections within the portal. Actively encourage users to share their experiences, suggestions, and pain points. Analyzing this feedback allows you to identify areas for improvement and implement changes that address the real needs of the users. A feedback-driven approach ensures the portal evolves in line with user expectations and remains an invaluable resource.

By focusing on these key elements, you can build an effective developer portal that not only meets the immediate needs of your developers but also adapts to their changing requirements. A well-designed, regularly updated portal with an intuitive interface and a strong feedback loop will empower developers, enhance collaboration, and drive innovation within your organization.

Do you need to build your own internal developer portal ?

When considering whether to build or buy an IDP, several factors must be evaluated to make an informed decision. Building your own IDP internally involves significant challenges, including extended time to delivery, high development risks, and unpredictable costs.

Delivering a fully functional platform that encourages adoption and expands across the enterprise can take long, especially when factoring in standard development risks like scope creep and quality concerns. Moreover, assembling a team with the necessary skillsets for design, development, deployment, maintenance, and upgrades is no small feat, often leading to underestimated costs and delayed timelines.

Developer adoption and retention pose additional risks. Developers tend to adopt tools that directly benefit their work and enhance their experience, quickly rejecting those that don’t meet their needs. Providing an incomplete IDP with limited orchestration features can lead to poor adoption rates, requiring extra resources to meet the developers’ expectations.

The complexity of integrating and updating with evolving enterprise and cloud technologies further burdens the development team, raising support and maintenance costs while reducing the opportunity for shared community knowledge.

Given these challenges, exploring commercial IDP Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions offers a compelling alternative. These solutions typically provide a comprehensive set of capabilities immediately, reducing the predictability of the total cost of ownership and upfront expenses.

They also come with built-in integrations and continuous updates, ensuring the platform remains current and functional within the ever-evolving technology landscape.

Why should you consider Calibo’s internal developer portal ?

One of the first steps in exploring internal developer portals is determining whether to build or buy. Building your own IDP internally can be fraught with challenges, including extended time to delivery, development risks, high costs, and potential issues with developer adoption.

In contrast, commercial IDP platforms like Calibo offer pre-integrated capabilities, plugins, and add-ons, simplifying the setup and ensuring a quicker, more reliable implementation.

Calibo’s platform supports extensive capabilities, including self-service provisioning, CI/CD pipeline automation, and containerized deployment orchestration. Additionally, it offers a Data Fabric Studio for intelligent data stack orchestration and product release orchestration capabilities.

With over 150 integrations to top-tier technologies, Calibo provides a comprehensive and scalable solution for improving developer experience and facilitating rapid product innovation.

Conclusion

Internal developer portals are a crucial tool for enhancing developer experience, streamlining software delivery, and promoting innovation within software engineering teams.

By providing a centralized platform for accessing tools, resources, and documentation, developer portals reduce friction, improve productivity, and ensure consistent governance. Whether building internally or opting for a commercial solution like Calibo, establishing an effective developer portal is a strategic move that can drive significant benefits for your organization.

See more of what Calibo can do here.