Microservices Platforms: When Team Topologies Meets Microservices Patterns - part 1

This is the first in a series of articles based on my QCon San Francisco 2025 talk Microservices Platforms: When Team Topologies Meets Microservices Patterns. It describes what platforms are, why they are essential for fast flow, and introduces the six essential platforms that stream-aligned service teams need to develop microservices effectively.

The following diagrams shows the six platforms that I will describe in this series of articles.

To understand why platforms matter - and why they are worth investing in - we first need to understand the underlying goal they serve: fast flow. The next section defines fast flow and explains why it matters.