Every platform team faces the same tension: standardize without slowing teams down. The resolution is golden paths — templates that take a service from git init to production with observability, CI/CD and security defaults included.
The test is selfish adoption: if creating a compliant service through the platform is faster than hand-rolling one, developers choose it without a mandate. We measure time-to-first-deploy for a new service and drive it under thirty minutes.
Escape hatches matter as much as defaults. Teams with real exceptions can eject — but they inherit the operational burden, which keeps the choice honest.