If you’re looking to understand the Backstage Developer Portal and how to integrate it into your organisation, this article will guide you through its powerful benefits. Featured in TechRadar by Devoteam, this post is part of our series on developer platforms, designed to enhance productivity and collaboration across teams.
Why a developer portal matters
A developer portal serves as a centralised hub, enabling developers, engineers, and managers to easily navigate and contribute to their ecosystem. Acting as a window into the IT landscape, the Backstage Developer Portal balances autonomy with discoverability. It supports three core functions: guiding ecosystem navigation, empowering engineers, and offering insights into the health of technology. With automated discoverability through a software catalogue, developers can access vital information, track ownership, and gain insights into the tech landscape, all in one place.
What is the Backstage Developer Portal?
Originally developed by Spotify, the Backstage Developer Portal emerged from a need to manage the rapid growth of microservices. Spotify open-sourced Backstage and donated it to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where it gained wide community support. Rather than acting as a single source of truth, the Backstage Developer Portal aggregates information, fostering autonomy and clear ownership across teams.
Backstage operates as a React/Node app, structured in a three-layer model that you can customise through plugins. The model includes:
- Core: This foundational layer includes essential packages, such as the CLI and utility tools, maintained by the open-source Backstage team.
- App: The App layer forms the main interface for end-users, typically managed by an organisation’s platform team.
- Plugins: Plugins are what make the Backstage Developer Portal highly extensible, offering numerous open-source options and allowing teams to create custom plugins. Plugins enable organisations to adapt the portal to their unique workflows and specific ecosystem needs.
This three-layer model makes Backstage a flexible framework for building a developer portal that aligns with an organisation’s unique requirements, rather than a one-size-fits-all product.
Key features
Software catalogue
The Software Catalogue is a core feature of the Backstage Developer Portal, mapping software assets within an organisation. This centralised directory supports discoverability, helps track ownership, manages dependencies, and provides insights into aspects like maturity and security.
Scaffolder
The Scaffolder simplifies onboarding and establishes best practices by using templates that initialise repositories with skeleton code and predefined settings. By automatically adding all components to the catalogue, it ensures consistency across the ecosystem and makes setup easier for teams.
TechDocs
TechDocs provides a central hub for documentation, converting markdown files into static pages. By keeping documentation close to the source code, it maintains accuracy and allows developers to focus on content rather than the publishing process.
Understanding what the Backstage Developer Portal is not
The Backstage Developer Portal is not a plug-and-play solution. It requires customisation to fit an organisation’s specific needs, with potential integration into existing tools and workflows. It acts as an abstraction layer, enhancing discoverability and collaboration rather than replacing current tools.
Additionally, the Backstage Developer Portal isn’t limited to developers. Engineers, product managers, and other roles can use it to streamline workflows and access critical information. Its flexibility makes it valuable across various teams within an organisation.
Important considerations for implementing the Backstage Developer Portal
Self-hosting the Backstage Developer Portal offers full customisability but requires setup and maintenance, which may demand significant resources. Like any new technology, implementation can present challenges, such as managing role-based access control (RBAC). Integrating Backstage effectively calls for skills, particularly in developing and managing custom plugins.
It’s important to remember that Backstage isn’t a magic solution; its success depends on organisational culture and a holistic approach to adoption. For a seamless implementation, commitment to collaboration and clear ownership across teams is essential.
Who benefits most?
The Backstage Developer Portal offers tremendous value for large organisations and scale-ups with complex ecosystems of tools and services. However, large organisations may also encounter restrictions and bureaucratic challenges, requiring a comprehensive approach to maximise benefits. For smaller organisations with simpler ecosystems, the advantages may be more limited, as they typically have more direct communication and less need for centralised resources.
Typical users
Users of the Backstage Developer Portal vary based on organisational needs, but often include application teams, infrastructure engineering teams, and product managers. Application teams benefit from streamlined processes, while product managers can monitor delivery metrics, and security specialists can enforce compliance standards. The portal’s adaptable design makes it a valuable resource across different roles, including enterprise architects and quality assurance teams.
Wrapping up
Backstage is a powerful tool to build functional developer portals. If you treat it as a framework instead of a platform, you can harness its full potential. Working along with the end users is the key to creating a robust development platform.
Hopefully this article got you up to speed with what Backstage is. You can read about how Backstage fits in an Internal Developer Platform in our previous blog post on our internal solution showcase Project Unox. Do keep an eye out for more technical blogs to follow, and of course feel free to directly reach out to us.
