You can require teams to use your platform, or you can make it the easiest option. Only one of those survives contact with a deadline.
Every internal platform faces the same question: how do we get teams to use it? The mandate is tempting because it is fast to write. It also reliably produces shadow infrastructure, because a team under deadline pressure will route around anything that slows them down, and they will be right to.
What a golden path actually is
A route from empty repository to running production service that is faster than doing it yourself. Not merely available — faster. If the compliant path takes a week and the non-compliant one takes a day, you have documentation, not a platform.
- Scaffolding that generates a repository with CI, governance and deployment already wired
- Sensible defaults for the ninety percent case, with an escape hatch for the rest
- The compliance work — scanning, policy, audit trail — included rather than bolted on afterwards
- Observable from the first deploy, so teams get value they did not have to build
The escape hatch is not optional
Platforms that forbid deviation get worked around covertly, which is worse than deviation you can see. Allow teams off the path, ask them to record why, and treat every instance as a gap in your product roadmap. The reasons are usually legitimate and usually fixable.
How to know it is working
Not adoption percentage — that can be mandated. Measure time from repository creation to first production deploy, and whether teams come back for the second service without being asked. Voluntary repeat usage is the only honest signal that the path is genuinely golden.