5 Features to improve DevEx in the enterprise using Backstage
Elia Group employs over 400 software engineers who build and maintain software across a diverse technology stack, including .NET, Java, Python, and various front-end frameworks. Our services and applications are hosted in on-premises data centres and both private and public clouds. This heterogeneous work environment brings both opportunities and challenges — most notably, a high cognitive load, which underscores the need for an improved Developer Experience (DevEx) within the enterprise.
Backstage is an open-source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to our software systems and infrastructure and enables our product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy.
In this post, I will highlight five features of Backstage that have helped us create a streamlined, end-to-end development environment. As a dedicated team of software engineers focused on building developer tools for the enterprise, we have tailored and configured Backstage to meet our unique needs.
Catalog: Reuse what exists
We have integrated Backstage with multiple source code management systems across the enterprise. For instance, the Azure DevOps integration runs every few minutes, crawling all code repositories and adding them to the catalog. Backstage automatically includes any Git repository that contains a metadata YAML file describing the code.
As a result, when a team is tasked with building new software, they can search the catalog for existing services, APIs, and components to reuse, reducing the need to start from scratch.
Templates: Automate more…
The software templates feature in Backstage is a powerful tool for creating components directly within the platform. By default, it allows us to generate skeleton code, populate it with templated variables, and publish the resulting component to locations like GitHub or Azure DevOps.
We have identified several use cases where Backstage’s templating capabilities enhance governance and reduce errors by automating repetitive tasks. For instance, we implemented a template for one team to create Git repositories on GitHub through Backstage. This approach ensures that all necessary metadata — such as details about the code, team, and technologies — is added consistently, rather than relying on manual creation directly from GitHub.
Tech Docs: Keep docs close to the code
Backstage includes a built-in docs-as-code solution, enabling software engineers to manage documentation seamlessly alongside their code. By writing documentation in Markdown files stored within their code repositories, engineers can, with minimal configuration, generate a professional, user-friendly documentation site directly in Backstage.
Tech Radar: Stay up to date
The tech radar offers a visual and concise summary of the technologies in use across the organization. It serves as a valuable guide for product teams, helping them select the best tools, languages, infrastructure, and platforms for new projects. By categorizing tools as approved, under evaluation, or not recommended, the tech radar provides clear insights to inform decision-making.
Graph: Get the big picture
Backstage features a robust system model that enables us to build an organization-wide knowledge graph of systems, services, and the people behind them.
In this model, a developer is a user who belongs to a group or a team. Each team owns a system, which is part of a broader domain. In the energy context, a domain might represent areas like energy generation or asset management.
A smart energy system, for example, is a system that can consist of multiple components, each potentially being a microservice. One such component could be a smart metering microservice, with its own Git repository. Components may rely on resources such as databases or cloud-based blob storage, while the system as a whole may expose public APIs in REST or gRPC for external consumption.
Here is a screenshot of a sub-graph of the Elia’s Backstage graph
Backstage has become a vital tool in improving the Developer Experience (DevEx) at Elia Group. With features like the catalog for reusing existing components, templates for automating repetitive tasks, a built-in docs-as-code solution, the tech radar for informed decision-making, and a robust system model for creating a knowledge graph, Backstage has streamlined our development processes. These capabilities not only enhance efficiency but also promote governance, reduce errors, and empower teams to focus on delivering high-quality software.
