Webinar: Your platform's gatekeeper problem: Why shared responsibility beats control by Techstrong Learning

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Your platform's gatekeeper problem: Why shared responsibility beats control

About

Is your platform team seen as a helpful partner or a frustrating gatekeeper? The answer often lies in your approach. Dictating tools and pipelines can stifle innovation and create shadow IT.

In this candid fireside chat, we’ll explore the human side of platform engineering. We’ll cover why a one-size-fits-all platform fails in a diverse enterprise, how to build a coalition of users through shared responsibility, and what a truly successful, product-minded platform team looks like. Learn how to shift from enforcing rules to enabling outcomes, and build a platform your developers actually want to use.

Key Takeaways:

1. Why a shared responsibility model between platform engineers and developers is the best approach.

2. Common mistakes platform engineers make at the start of their journey and how to avoid them.

3. How to build a shared responsibility model that works for both low-maturity teams with strict guardrails and with high-maturity teams that want to innovate.

When

Wednesday, November 12, 2025 · 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT -5:00)

Presenters

Bob Walker

Field CTO - Octopus Deploy

Bob is a Field CTO at Octopus Deploy. Bob started as a developer in the early days of .NET when web forms were the hottest new thing and manual deployments were the norm. After one too many five-hour 2 AM Saturday deployments, he searched for any automation to stop that pain. His original focus was on automating database deployments. Since then, his passion has expanded from writing code to creating full CI/CD pipelines and implementing DevOps practices.

Shipra Mahindra

Principal Product Manager - Octopus Deploy

As a Principal Product Manager at Octopus, Ships is focused on solving problems for Platform Teams at Octopus Deploy. With a diverse background in SaaS companies such as Canva and Xero, she finds joy in improving users’ lives by simplifying their everyday and bringing calm to the chaos of life. Ships brings product-led thinking to teams by building user empathy, aligning on business value and taking a problem-first approach. She easily switches between strategy and delivery to drive teams forward. Her passion for building products also flows through into mentoring local startup founders.

John Bristowe

Principal Developer Advocate - Octopus Deploy

John Bristowe helps engineering teams deliver reliably as a developer advocate at Octopus Deploy. He leads community engagement, creates educational content, and appears regularly on Octopus streams and webinars. Before Octopus, John spent years in developer relations at Microsoft and Telerik/Progress, speaking at industry events and building programs for web and .NET developers. He contributes to Octopus open source, including the Octopus CLI, the Terraform provider for Octopus, and several GitHub Actions that connect build pipelines to deployment workflows. John is based in Robina, Australia, and has been active in the developer community for over two decades.