Internal developer portals (IDPs) are valuable for their ability to accelerate software development pipelines by providing easy, on-demand access for developers to access the resources they need.
Today’s software development lifecycle (SDLC) is complex, supported by a vast array of platforms and resources.
In many software development organizations, developers need to navigate this world of tools, services, and documentation systems to access the APIs, infrastructure, or environments they need to build and ship products.
This complexity holds back developer productivity. In fact, research suggests that as much as 40% of developers’ time is spent on tasks that are not directly related to software development.
Many software development organizations leverage internal developer portals to minimize that number so that developers can ship new products and features as quickly as possible.
What is an Internal Developer Portal?
An Internal Developer Portal (IDP) is a centralized platform that consolidates these resources into a comprehensive interface providing easy access for everything a developer needs in one place.
The IDP is a one-stop shop where developers can interact with various internal systems, APIs, services, and infrastructure components.
Benefits of Internal Developer Portals
Platform engineering teams responsible for maintaining IDPs prioritize a simple and effective developer experience. By removing the complexities of the resources required to deliver these services—such as the nuances of cloud infrastructure and environment platforms—internal developer portals have been proven to improve developer productivity substantially.
Unlike a traditional developer documentation site, an internal developer portal is a service catalog that integrates a wide range of functionalities, such as access to internal APIs, services, and reusable components, and enables teams to search for existing resources, environments, or microservices. This approach reduces duplicated work and promotes collaboration across teams.
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Some internal developer portals may also offer insights into service health, monitoring tools, CI/CD pipeline status, and logs so developers can review crucial information to manage and troubleshoot applications.
The inherent self-service nature of internal developer portals makes developers more independent when it comes to provisioning infrastructure and environments, thereby eliminating the redundant manual work that creates bottlenecks for DevOps teams.
With automated workflows and integrations into the internal infrastructure, these portals ensure consistency, security, and compliance, while fostering innovation and collaboration across development teams. This ultimately accelerates software delivery and enhances operational efficiency.
Particularly when integrated with an internal developer platform, an internal developer portal can accelerate productivity and efficiency across the software development organization.
Internal Developer Portals vs. Internal Developer Platforms: What’s the Difference?
While they sound similar, it’s important to understand the difference between internal developer portals and internal developer platforms.
Developer portals provide the frontend experience from which developers access resources like APIs, provision infrastructure services, or launch development environments on-demand.
Internal developer platforms, meanwhile, streamline the creation and maintenance of the services accessed via the developer portal. For example, this can include the creation of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) modules and the blueprints for development environments that enable developers to run the resources via self-service.
Go Deeper: Learn the Differences Between Internal Developer Portals and Internal Developer Platforms
Many platform teams choose to integrate their internal developer platforms with their developer portals so they can bridge the gap between the DevOps and development teams. This approach can accelerate productivity for DevOps teams by automating time-consuming tasks and creating reusable modules for resources, which can be accessed via the developer portal.
Some internal developer platforms feature similar self-service capabilities to internal developer portals.
This not only helps developers focus on building applications but allows DevOps teams to spend less time responding to tickets and other routine tasks to support developers.
Meanwhile, the platform can enable DevOps teams to standardize the resources delivered via the developer portal by enforcing cloud governance policies automatically. Since the platform manages the templates from which all infrastructure and environments are deployed, it can deny any deployment that violates policies.
As an added benefit, delivering application services via an internal developer platform allows platform teams to track how the resources delivered via the portal are accessed and performing.
This allows platform teams to identify ways to improve developer experience, while also empowering DevOps teams to correct issues with the underlying infrastructure and services supporting the software development lifecycle.
Implementing an Internal Developer Portal
Implementing an internal developer portal involves creating a centralized hub that streamlines developer workflows, fosters collaboration, and enhances efficiency across development teams.
The process typically starts by defining key objectives, such as improving access to tools, documentation, and services that developers need to build, test, and deploy software quickly.
The portal should integrate with existing developer tools (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, version control systems, and cloud platforms), making it easier for developers to discover, reuse, and manage resources like APIs, templates, infrastructure components, services, and Environment as Code templates. A robust IDP requires an effective platform ops strategy that emphasizes user management and role-based access control to ensure appropriate permissions.
At the core, a well-designed portal provides self-service capabilities, enabling developers to spin up environments, access code repositories, and leverage reusable templates or infrastructure modules without needing to involve other teams. Automation is key, reducing manual processes and eliminating bottlenecks.
Maintaining up-to-date documentation and creating a clear navigation structure is critical, as the portal should be intuitive to use.
Monitoring and tracking key metrics, such as build times and deployment frequency, can help assess the portal’s impact.
Similarly, platform engineering teams will need regular feedback loops to enable continuous improvement and ensure that the portal evolves to meet developers’ needs.
Key Components of an Internal Developer Platform
Every portal is likely to be unique, as each development team has its own needs, practices, and standards.
The key components of an IDP include:
- Self-Service Interfaces: Developers will need to access tools, services, and environments autonomously. The portal provides interfaces for spinning up development environments, managing infrastructure, or deploying applications without the need for manual intervention from other teams.
- Integrations Across the Dev Tool Ecosystem: An IDP integrates with a wide range of development tools, such as CI/CD pipelines, version control systems (like Git), ticketing systems (e.g., Jira), cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), and orchestration and deployment platforms (e.g. Quali Torque). These integrations centralize workflows, making it easier to manage the entire software lifecycle from one place.
- Documentation and Knowledge Base: A well-maintained knowledge repository should contain documentation on best practices, API references, coding guidelines, and other resources, ensuring developers can quickly find answers to common questions.
- Security and Role-Based Access Control: To enhance self service, IDPs must also minimize security risks. Effective IDPs allow users to operate the resources they need but without the permissions to modify those resources or access to the security credentials required to do so.
- Analytics and Monitoring: Tools for tracking performance, usage, and overall impact help teams assess productivity and improve the portal over time.