4 Common Pitfalls when Adopting Backstage
summary
Backstage is not a drop-in product but a TypeScript application (React frontend, TypeScript backend) that ships with SQLite by default and needs Postgres/RDS, Docker/Helm and persistent volumes to run in production. Common pitfalls are owning the app (70 organizations end up with dedicated teams), wrestling with upgrades and a million JS dependencies, the fact that plugins require code changes and rebuilds, and adoption work: scaffolder/templates help, but tracking usage and embedding it into dev workflows is essential. Public project shows ~1,000 adopters and 25,000 stars.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:04Stories leading to Backstage
- 5:01What is Backstage
- 15:27Building as a framework
- 19:16Running in production
- 23:08Productizing the platform
- 28:28Plugin complexity
- 32:50Developer experience role
- 34:40Q&A
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