How much to invest in platform work | Jean-Michel Lemieux (Shopify, Atlassian)

Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO of Shopify and VP of Engineering at Atlassian, explains how to advocate for investing in platform work, which projects to fund, and what distinguishes a great platform leader. —Discussion points:(1:38) Jean-Michel’s definition of platform work (6:44) Why reliability, performance, and stability do fall within platform work (7:24) The consequences of lacking a product mindset in platform(9:20) Why and how to advocate for investing 50% of R&D spend in platform work (12:31) How Jean-Michel arrived at 50% as the percentage of R&D spend that should be allocated to platform (16:09) Jean-Michel’s experiences with different levels of investment in platform work (21:59) What percentage of platform investment should go towards keep the lights on work(24:01) Whether the allocation changes at different company stages(27:05) Why platform work is consistently underinvested in(29:00) Why having a platform team could be an anti-pattern(32:32) How to advocate for this work to leaders(35:35) What it looks like to over-invest in platform work (40:03) How to decide which initiatives to invest in(47:41) Making build vs buy decisions in platform work (49:58) What distinguishes a great platform leader —Mentions and links: Follow Jean-Michel Lemieux on LinkedIn and Twitter Abi’s post that sourced many of the questions discussed in this conversationJean-Michel’s book chapter on platform investmentsJean-Michel’s definition of what platform work is The podcast episode on what Shopify expects of managers