Implementation Journey 🛠️

Phase 0: POC (Weeks 1 & 2)

• Goals

  • Local Backstage setup

  • Quick example template to showcase automation capabilities

    • Service Discovery example

      • read Org data from Github

    • Scaffolder Automation example

      • write to Github (pull requests & repository creation)

• Challenges

  • Learning about platform and configuration

  • Getting permissions to create a Github App

• Outcomes

  • Transferred knowledge to team

  • Demo'd platform capabilities

  • Received approval to implement

Phase 1: Deployment, Service Discovery & API Docs (Quarter 1)

• Goals

  • Deploy Backstage to Cloud

  • Authentication via Okta SSO integration

  • API Documentation Feature Setup

• Challenges

  • IaC and CI/CD setup

    • Multiple meetings with Cloud Engineering team to figure out right architecture

      • Settled on Cloud Run for cost savings

    • GitOps CI/CD Setup

      • Deployments on merge to default branch

      • Automated tests (linting, unit, e2e, etc.) on push to any branch

  • Authentication requirements gathering and implementation

    • Worked with IT to receive secrets and setup Okta configuration

  • API documentation publishing feature released

    • Friction to push teams to use feature

  • Cross-team alignment on service discovery standards

    • Once again friction to get teams to implement across org repositories

• Outcomes

  • First few Backstage deployments

  • Secure authentication flow

  • CI/CD pipeline setup

  • Centralized API documentation started

    • Found out it takes time to get adoption 😿
  • Initial developer feedback

Phase 2: Scaffolder Templates (Quarter 2)

• Goals

  • Achieve full API documentation adoption

  • Scaffolder templates framework

  • Templates for backend and frontend engineers

  • Plugins to reduce context switching

  • Google Analytics to track usage of Backstage

• Challenges

  • Gathering unwritten engineering standards

    • Working with architecture team and engineers to document best practices and create re-usable "skeleton" repositories

  • Long hours spent testing and debugging templates

  • Implementing plugins for various patforms (datadog, sentry, snyk and entity feedback)

• Outcomes

  • Crentralized all of our API docs

  • Added two backend templates (nodejs/php microservice) and one frontend template (vuejs microfrontend)

  • Documented engineering standards for all future projects

  • Quick wins implementing plugins that reduced context switching and allowed engineers to leave feedback on eachother's projects

Phase 3: More Templates & Enhancements (Quarter 3-4)

• Goals

  • Work with new teams to create more templates

  • Implement cost insights

  • Automate engineering standard checks against entities and visualization

• Challenges

  • Org wide tagging of cloud resources to allow getting GCP billing data linked to Backstage entities

    • Took a lot of effort because it affected lots of team's projects IaC

  • Migrating engineering standards documentation to automated checks using Spotify's Sound Check plugin

    • Lots of time spent figuring out how to get the correct metadata to make sure checks are reliable

• Outcomes

  • Multiple team-specific and generic templates like pub/sub topics

  • Users can visualize cloud costs per entity

    
  • Engineering standards turned in to automated checks which allowed visualizing service maturity

    • Management can track reliability and quality insights on their team's projects