Spotify has released five plugins for Backstage as a bundle that can be purchased. They cover a variety of use cases including compliance, access control, employee training and satisfaction, and usage metrics. The plugins are a combination of existing Spotify tools and new developments specifically for this suite.

Backstage is an open source platform for building developer portals. Spotify uses Backstage internally as a home for its development golden paths. Similar to the concept popularized by Netflix, the golden path provides a standardized experience that creates the necessary skeleton of the project. Spotify recently donated Backstage to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

The plugins in the commercial package represent some of the most used plugins as well as new plugins created specifically for Backstage users. Individually, the five plugins do many different things, from promoting software quality to managing access control and connecting mentors with mentors. But they all reflect a very Spotify-specific way of working. That’s because they’re built on the same principles that underpin the way we build all our software. Let’s take a closer look at some of those principles.

Spotify’s five plugins for Backstage
You can see different combinations of these principles underlying the new plugins in our suite – both in what they do and how they work.

1. Soundcheck
Performs checks on your software components and shows how well they meet your organization’s engineering standards.

2. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Makes it flexible and easy to control who has access to what in your Backstage instance.

3. Skill sharing
An internal marketplace for on-the-job training opportunities where mentors can connect with mentors, teams can find temporary help (“Wanted: Frontend Web Dev for Two-Week Embed”), programming partners can partner up, and ad hoc teams can come together to work on hacking projects.

4. Pulse
An R&D survey framework-specific to product development-that lets you track key productivity and satisfaction metrics and analyze anonymized response data to discover trends. (Known internally at Spotify as the EngSat Survey.)

5. Insights
Tracks Backstage usage within your organization by capturing and displaying key data points, including daily active Backstage users and most frequently used plugins.

Backstage solves the problems that turn an engineer’s day-to-day life into an obligation rather than a joy, and prevent teams from delivering great software, consistently and quickly, at scale.