Lori Schafer in Forbes Tech Council: How To Build Scalable, Reliable And Effective Internal Tech Systems

In many businesses, platform engineers serve two sets of customers: external clients and internal colleagues. When building tools for internal use, following the same user-centered design principles applied to customer-facing products isn’t just good practice—it’s a proven way to boost team efficiency, accelerate development and improve overall user satisfaction.

Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share key design principles platform engineers should keep front and center whether they’re building for clients or colleagues. From prioritizing real team needs to planning ahead for worst-case scenarios, these strategies can ensure internal systems are scalable, reliable and truly supportive of the teams they’re built for.

1. Minimize User Friction

The one core design principle platform engineers should keep front and center when building internal tools is minimizing user friction by streamlining the journey and improving cycle time. Additionally, internal tools should include clear feedback mechanisms to help users quickly identify and resolve issues, along with just-in-time guidance to support user education as needed. - Naman Raval

2. Build With External Use In Mind

You should always consider the possibility that an internal tool may eventually end up being an external tool. With that in mind, you should try not to couple core logic to internal user information. - David Van Ronk, Bridgehead IT

3. Design With Empathy

It’s important to design with empathy. Internal tools should prioritize user experience for the engineers and teams who rely on them. Simple, intuitive interfaces and seamless workflows reduce friction, enhance productivity and encourage adoption—making the tool not just functional, but loved. - Luis Peralta, Parallel Plus, Inc.

4. Focus On Simplicity

Ease of use and intuitive design must be front and center when building internal tools. Features that are overly nested or require significant learning time directly impact productivity. This inefficiency can be quantified in terms of human hours multiplied by the number of resources affected, potentially leading to substantial revenue loss, especially for larger organizations. - Hari Sonnenahalli, NTT Data Business Solutions

5. Adopt Domain-Driven Design And A ‘Streaming Data First’ Approach

Platform engineers should prioritize domain-driven design to explore, access and share data seamlessly. As cloud diversification and real-time data pipelines become essential, embracing a “streaming data first” approach is key. This shift enhances automation, reduces complexity and enables rapid, AI-driven insights across business domains. - Guillaume Aymé, Lenses.io

6. Build Scalable Tools With A Self-Service Model

A self-service-based scaled service operating model is critical for the success of an internal tool. Often, engineers take internal stakeholders for granted, not realizing they are their customers—customers whose broader use of an internal tool will make or break their product. Alongside scalable design, it will be equally important to have an organizational change management strategy in place. - Abhi Shimpi

7. Prioritize Cognitive Leverage

Platform engineers should prioritize cognitive leverage over just reducing cognitive load. Internal tools should simplify tasks, amplify engineers’ thinking and accelerate decision-making by surfacing context, patterns and smart defaults. - Manav Kapoor, Amazon

8. Empower Developers With Low-Dependency Tools

The platform engineering team should strive to minimize dependencies on themselves when designing any solutions. It’s crucial to empower the development team to use these tools independently and efficiently. - Prasad Banala, Dollar General Corporation

9. Lead With API-Driven Development

Platform engineers should prioritize API-driven development over jumping straight into UI when building internal tools. Starting with workflows and backend design helps map data, avoid duplicated requests and reduce long-term tech debt. Though slower up front, this approach creates scalable, reliable tools aligned with actual business processes, not just quick fixes for internal use. - Jae Lee, MBLM

10. Observe Real Workflows

Platform engineers should design for the actual job to be done, not just stated feature requests. They should observe how teams work and build tools that streamline those critical paths. The best internal tools solve real workflow bottlenecks, not just surface-level asks from teammates. - Alessa Cross, Ventrilo AI

11. Favor Speed, Flexibility And Usability

You have to design like you’re building a food truck, not a fine-dining kitchen—fast, flexible and usable by anyone on the move. Internal tools should favor speed over ceremony, with intuitive defaults and minimal setup. If your engineers need a manual just to order fries (or deploy code), you’ve overdesigned the menu. - Joel Frenette, TravelFun.Biz

12. Ensure Tools Are Clear, Simple And Well-Explained

When building internal tools, platform engineers should focus on making them easy and smooth for developers to use. If tools are simple, clear and well-explained, developers can do their work faster and without confusion. This saves time, reduces mistakes and helps the whole team work better. - Jay Krishnan, NAIB IT Consultancy Solutions WLL

13. Embrace User-Centric Design

Platform engineers should prioritize user-centric design. They must focus on the needs, workflows and pain points of internal users to create intuitive, efficient tools. This principle ensures adoption, reduces training time and boosts productivity, as tools align with real-world use cases, minimizing friction and maximizing value for developers and teams. - Lori Schafer, Digital Wave Technology

14. Prioritize Developer Experience

Internal platforms must prioritize developer experience above all. The best tools feel invisible—engineers use them without friction because interfaces are intuitive, documentation is clear and workflows are streamlined. When developers spend more time fighting your platform than building with it, you’ve failed your mission. - Anuj Tyagi

15. Bake In Observability

Platform engineers should treat internal tools as evolving ecosystems, not static products. A core design principle is observability by default—bake in usage analytics, error tracking and feedback hooks from day one. This ensures tools organically improve over time and are grounded in real-world behavior, not assumptions, creating systems that adapt as teams and needs evolve. - Pawan Anand, Ascendion

16. Leverage Progressive Abstraction

Progressive abstraction lets internal platforms scale with developer maturity. Engineers can start with guided, low-friction “golden paths” for beginners while enabling power users to customize, script or access APIs. This balance avoids tool sprawl, supports growth and keeps platforms inclusive, adaptive and relevant over time. - Anusha Nerella, State Street Corporation

17. Streamline Processes Through Predictable, Intuitive Interfaces

Internal tools must streamline processes instead of creating additional obstacles. Focus on clear, intuitive interfaces; fast onboarding with minimal documentation; and solid default settings that include advanced options for experienced users. Build in observability and self-service support, and strive for consistent, predictable behavior. - Saket Chaudhari, TriNet Inc.

18. Design Easy Authentication And Authorization Systems

There should be ease of authentication and authorization. When building internal tools, you shouldn’t design in silos. You must consider how many clicks it takes for an analyst, mid-call with a client, to launch what they need for troubleshooting. Seamless access, least privilege and contextual authentication aren’t just security features—they’re reflections of good architecture and thoughtful design. - Santosh Ratna Deepika Addagalla, Trizetto Provider Solutions

19. Engineer For High-Stress, Critical Scenarios

A word of advice is to engineer for the worst day, not the average day. Internal tools become critical lifelines during incidents, yet we often design them for sunny-weather scenarios. When a system is melting down at 3 a.m. and the on-call engineer is bleary-eyed, that’s when your tool’s UX truly matters. Simple interfaces with clear error messages become worth their weight in gold. - Ishaan Agarwal, Square

20. Ensure Users Don’t Need Deep Platform Knowledge

Design for self-service and extension. Internal tools should empower teams to solve problems without deep platform knowledge. Engineers should hide complexity behind sensible defaults and include clean abstractions that allow extensions and clear documentation. Platforms succeed when others can build confidently without needing to ask for help every time. - Abhishek Shivanna, Nubank