# From Build to Adoption: A Playbook for Driving Platform Migration

DevFeed: [From Build to Adoption: A Playbook for Driving Platform Migration](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/from-build-to-adoption-a-playbook-for-driving-platform-migration-22539.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/from-build-to-adoption-a-playbook-for-driving-platform-migration-a4a36709827f?source=rss----905ea2b3d4d1---4>)

Author: Astha Purohit

Published: 2026-06-02T00:21:44Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Walmart Global Tech](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/walmart-global-tech.md>)

Topics: [Platform Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/platform-engineering.md>), [migration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/migration.md>), [consistency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/consistency.md>)

Tags: [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [migration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/migration.md>), [platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform.md>), [platform-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform-engineering.md>), [product-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product-management.md>), [scope](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scope.md>), [teams](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/teams.md>)

## AI overview

This article shares lessons from 18 months of building an internal platform and driving tenant adoption. It explains why migration often progresses slowly despite a successful launch, because tenant teams face engineering costs, regression risk, calendar pressure, and competing priorities. It presents platform adoption as a distinct challenge from platform delivery.

## Source excerpt

What 18 months of building an internal platform -- and driving tenant adoption -- have taught me. The common mistakes, and six phases for doing it right. The strange quiet after launch Six months after we built and launched an internal platform, I thought adoption would be easy. The reality couldn't have been more different. Adoption often takes longer than expected because tenant teams already have working systems, and migration carries real cost. The new system is working. The integration guide exists. The kickoff meetings have happened. And yet the pace of migration is slower than expected. Building a platform has a kind of urgency. There are sprints, demos, design reviews, exec readouts, and finally a launch announcement. Architecture diagrams get refined each week. A go-live date appears on a roadmap, and everyone sprints toward it. Then the platform ships, and the real work starts. I've spent the last 18 months building and launching an internal platform at Walmart and have been leading its tenant onboarding. This is a piece about what I've learned -- including the mistakes -- about platform adoption. AI Generated ImageThe most expensive assumption in platform engineering: "If we build it, they will come." It is comforting because it makes adoption someone else's problem. The platform team builds; the tenant teams choose. We tell ourselves that if the platform is good enough, the choice will be easy. But the tenant team already has a working system. It is integrated, instrumented, and understood. It carries years of bug fixes and accumulated edge cases. When tenant teams are asked to migrate, it feels like taking on a tax -- engineering effort, regression risk, calendar pressure -- in exchange for a benefit that mostly accrues down the road, while pulling engineering bandwidth away from higher-priority work today. Yes, there are real benefits: consistency across the company, a lower long-term cost of ownership, shared capabilities that scale across teams, and capabi