I think a critical component of making platform teams work is to allow internal competition between the platform team and the stream-aligned team using some other technology. In this way the platform team is a stream-aligned team whose customers are internal, and they have to win or lose within their market (internal teams). For example, a stream-aligned team can either use platform team CI/CD or github actions.
What I've seen is that platform teams work well in either small scale (because focus is clear to all) and large scale (because of this internal competitive dynamic) but are extremely hard to execute between the two.
This is really cool. Out of curiosity - how did you actually set this up for him to use? Was it on tablet or a computer or phone? Any suggestions for a dad of a 3.5 year old?
Also, is he reading / at what level? Trying to get a feel for when I can introduce it to him.
May be hard with unpredictable timing of a layoff, but I’d recommend folks look into Recurse Center: https://www.recurse.com/
After closing down my last startup I did it. It was a great balance of community providing some baseline structure to my days while being mostly unstructured allowing me to explore interests for fun.
And at the end they help a lot with getting a job. If you can pull it off financially/with timing, I highly recommend the experience.
I built a command line wordle solver that provides an updated best guess as the game progresses and you learn more. Right now it's just based on word frequency, but working to add more.
Also added a command line version of wordle in case you want to play more and practice and a simulator I'm using now to explore optimal strategy more.
What I've seen is that platform teams work well in either small scale (because focus is clear to all) and large scale (because of this internal competitive dynamic) but are extremely hard to execute between the two.