Balancing Autonomy and Compliance: How to Scale CI/CD with Composable Platforms

Modern software delivery is a balancing act. Teams must move fast but not break things. They should be free to work in their own way, but not cause chaos. Platforms must also scale without becoming overly complex.

In platform engineering, these challenges often appear in designing CI/CD solutions. When does your platform stop helping and start getting in the way? When does giving teams freedom turn into risk? And how do you support many different teams without burning out your platform team?

One answer lies in balanced abstractions such as composable environments and business-focused Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS).

As internal platforms evolve, composability has become a key way to build safe, scalable systems that still give developers freedom. This post explains how composable environments and business-aware PaaS help deliver the value of platform engineering, and how to use them without making common mistakes.

A Goldilocks Approach for Modern Platform Teams

In Blog 1, we introduced four CI/CD abstraction models. These ranged from raw infrastructure support to full application orchestration. Each end of the spectrum has trade-offs. One offers the most freedom. The other gives the most support.

In Blog 2, we looked at what happens when organisations lean too far in either direction. This post explores how composable environments and PaaS can offer a “just right” solution.

These middle-ground abstractions allow platform teams to manage critical areas such as identity, dependencies, or resource limits. At the same time, they let application teams handle testing and deployment. This builds a sense of ownership in the teams. It also avoids the two extremes: fragile do-it-yourself setups or rigid systems with no flexibility. Teams can still choose where the line is between what they own and what the platform handles.

The Value of Composable Environments

A composable environment is a reusable, modular setup that includes the creation of, and wiring to, everything an application needs to run. This might consist of infrastructure, secrets, DNS, and observability. Unlike raw infrastructure or fixed pipelines, composable environments set clear boundaries. The platform handles the underlying setup and ongoing maintenance of that infrastructure. The application team manages and maintains the software that runs inside.

This method supports three main platform goals:

• Speed: Teams do not waste time setting up their own environments or database links.

• Safety: The environments follow set patterns. They can be audited, patched, and versioned.

• Scale: The platform team provides environments as a product. This helps them support speed and safety for many teams without extra work.

Just as important, composable environments make handover clear. The platform team sets up and manages the environment. The app team builds and runs the app. This is where autonomy and compliance meet.

How PaaS Can Make Platforms Even Better

While environment management sets a strong base, adding PaaS-style build systems can further reduce application development load with even more standardisation.

By standardising how code becomes an artefact using shared images, buildpacks, or internal registries, platform teams cut down variation and speed up delivery. Onboarding becomes even easier, and security improves across the board.

While environments were already wired and flexible in the previous abstraction, with PaaS, you get a complete system that runs from source to production. PaaS abstractions work best for applications that meet the twelve-factor application principles, including similar environments but distinct configurations, allowing a single codebase to support multiple environments easily.

It is essential to acknowledge that investing in refactoring all applications to fit within the PaaS model is not always a good return on investment (ROI). This is particularly true in larger and more tenured organisations, which led to even some of the largest and most successful Cloud Foundry installations serving only a small percentage of the total applications at an organisation, but still providing significant value to those applications. 

Platform Design Patterns That Scale

If your organisation is interested in a PaaS solution, you likely have at least a few different types of applications to support. Internal tools, COTS, data and mobile are examples of application types that can demand unique platform support.

These may call into question the value of building abstractions higher than infrastructure, given the unique needs. This is where using software development patterns to build each abstraction on a solid foundation of lower-level abstractions is essential.

When building a PaaS, it is essential to build within the composable environment structure, just as that environment is being built on top of supported infrastructure. This setup allows teams to compose and decompose over time. Possibly starting with a structured PaaS solution but breaking out to use more bespoke infrastructure over time, or moving from a composed environment platform to the PaaS when the software has been refactored into a twelve-factor compliant application. It is designed to be built up in layers and stay sustainable.

How do you build composable platforms that work at scale? Use these three key patterns:

1. Composability by Contract

   • Use clear, versioned interfaces between the platform and the application teams. Provide teams with a versioned specification (i.e., OpenAPIv3) to request resources and make all requests via a clear API, regardless of the user interface.

2. Fleet Management First

   • Treat every component like a fleet, not one-off setups. Use tools to detect drift, manage upgrades for abstracted resources, and provide upgrade options, including the ability for teams to opt in to changes for exposed resources. This keeps the system secure and up to date without requiring extensive manual effort.

3. Shared Ownership, Not Shared Confusion

   • Offer clear extension points but keep the core systems consistent. Provide consistent structures for adding components to the platform, including clear versioning indicating the maturity of the solution. This makes support easier and allows for more automation, and enables consumers to choose the right options.

These patterns help platforms scale across teams, products, and locations without breaking apart or slowing down.

Getting Started: Evolve, Don’t Rebuild

The good news is that you don't need to scrap your current setup to use composable environments. Start small. Focus on adjusting boundaries first.

First, audit your current handoff points to determine the complexity the application team is taking on and whether it adds value. For example, are you giving developers cloud credentials? Terraform? Pipeline templates? Evaluate if these are truly unique to each application team or if they are adding unnecessary complexity that could be abstracted away.

Where possible, standardise on environments as the core abstraction. Define what “dev”, “staging”, and “prod” mean in your platform and then turn the idea of an environment into a reusable object teams can use.

Build collaborators and champions by using contracts, not mandates. Write down what the platform gives and what teams are expected to manage. Treat this like a product interface, with versioning and support. Ideally, this enables more users to access the platform. Still, conversely, it also facilitates an optional platform by clarifying the requirements all applications must meet, whether on or off the platform.

Start small and own your APIs. Rather than focusing investment in how you implement automation, start with what you want to offer to your users. Build a simple user flow for creating a new environment, regardless of whether the implementation involves manual steps and handoffs. Keep that API stable for your users and iterate towards faster, more reliable delivery of the environment, while also expanding your offerings.

Measure adoption, not enforcement. Defining, let alone achieving 100% usage, is difficult at best. Instead, look for high-impact use such as tracking onboarding time, time to deploy, and satisfaction. These demonstrate that your abstractions are effective and you are having a genuine impact on your business.

Final Thoughts: The Power of Composability

Composable environments are not new, but in this new wave of platform building, they are crucial to high-value platform design. They provide a middle ground that enables teams to move fast while staying safe.

By using composable environments with fleet management and shared contracts, you can provide a flexible, high-leverage platform and even extend to a PaaS-style build system. This composability allows your platform to grow with your organisation without becoming a bottleneck or needing a rewrite every few years.

You do not need the perfect platform from the start. Just build one that teams want to use and that you can grow over time.

You can learn how Syntasso Kratix Enterprise (SKE) enables composable platform design and supports your platform engineering efforts.