Backstage Plugins Worth Building Internally

Backstage out of the box is a developer portal skeleton. The Spotify-originated open-source project provides substantial framework — software catalog, plugin architecture, TechDocs — but substantial value comes from plugins. The substantial plugins are partly off-the-shelf community plugins and partly internal custom plugins specific to your environment. This post walks through which plugins are actually worth building and which are diminishing-returns work.

What Backstage substantially provides#

The substantial Backstage core:

Software catalog. Central registry of services, APIs, websites, libraries, plus the various entities.

TechDocs. Documentation co-located with code, rendered from Markdown.

Plugin architecture. Extension points for custom functionality.

Templates and scaffolding. Self-service service creation.

Search. Cross-catalog search.

Authentication and authorization. Integration with substantial identity providers.

Out of the box, Backstage is substantially-valuable framework but limited capability. Substantial value comes from plugins.

The substantial off-the-shelf plugins#

Several substantial community plugins are typically worth deploying:

Kubernetes plugin — substantial visibility into services on Kubernetes.

CI/CD plugins (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, plus the various) — substantial visibility into pipelines.

Cloud plugins (AWS, GCP, Azure) — substantial cost and resource visibility.

TechRadar — substantial visualization of technology choices and recommendations.

OpsGenie/PagerDuty — substantial on-call and incident integration.

Sonarqube/Code coverage — substantial code quality integration.

ArgoCD/Flux — substantial GitOps integration.

Cost-management plugins (Kubecost, plus the various) — substantial visibility into per-service cost.

Substantial Spotify-published plugins — substantial set of substantial plugins from Spotify.

These plugins are substantial value out of the box; building equivalents from scratch is substantial waste.

The substantial custom plugins worth building#

Several patterns of substantial custom plugin development:

Substantial deployment dashboard. Specific deployment process visualization for your specific deployment patterns. Substantial value because vendor plugins don’t match your specifics.

Substantial environment management. Substantial self-service provisioning of dev/staging environments. Substantial productivity gain.

Substantial cost-attribution dashboards. Substantial cost breakdown by team, service, business unit. Substantial leverage on substantial cloud spend.

Substantial compliance dashboards. Substantial visibility into compliance state of services. Substantial value in regulated industries.

Substantial security dashboards. Substantial visibility into vulnerability state, secret rotation, plus the various security signals. Substantial leverage.

Substantial on-call and incident management. Substantial-specific incident management workflows.

Substantial team-specific operations. Substantial workflows specific to your operational patterns.

Substantial integration with internal systems. Substantial homegrown systems that don’t have off-the-shelf integration.

The substantial not-worth-building patterns#

Several patterns of substantial plugin development that’s typically not worth the work:

Substantial duplication of off-the-shelf plugins. Building your own GitHub Actions plugin when one exists. Substantial waste unless you have substantial-specific need.

Substantial UI plugins for things engineers don’t use. Substantial fancy visualization of metrics nobody looks at. Substantial waste.

Substantial plugins for systems being deprecated. Substantial work on a plugin for a system you’re moving away from. Substantial waste.

Substantial plugins requested by management without engineer support. Substantial dashboards that look good in executive reviews but don’t change engineer behavior. Substantial waste.

The substantial governance dimension#

Substantial Backstage deployments need substantial governance:

Substantial catalog ownership. Who owns each entity? Substantial discipline matters.

Substantial catalog freshness. Stale entries substantially degrade trust. Substantial automation matters.

Substantial plugin curation. Not every plugin should be deployed; substantial discipline about what’s added.

Substantial template governance. Self-service templates need substantial review; substantial bad templates create substantial mess.

Substantial standards enforcement. Backstage can substantially enforce standards (every service has docs, every service has on-call, plus the various). Substantial leverage.

The substantial production patterns#

A few specific patterns from production deployments:

Substantial catalog generation from code. Service metadata in catalog-info.yaml files in repos; Backstage discovers automatically. Substantial vs manual maintenance.

Substantial integration with existing identity. Backstage authentication via existing SSO. Substantial seamless experience.

Substantial multi-region deployment for global organizations. Substantial latency matters for substantial daily-use tools.

Substantial mobile responsiveness for engineers on-call viewing dashboards on phone.

Substantial monitoring of Backstage itself. Substantial reliance on Backstage means substantial SLA requirements for the platform.

When Backstage isn’t the right answer#

Several scenarios where Backstage isn’t substantially right:

Small organizations. Substantial overhead for organizations with substantially-few services.

Substantial multi-tool standardization already. Organizations where existing tooling already provides substantial visibility may not benefit substantially from Backstage.

Organizations without platform engineering capability. Substantial Backstage deployment requires substantial ongoing work; without dedicated team, it substantially fails.

What we typically see at clients#

Common patterns:

Backstage deployed but barely used. Substantial common pattern — installation without substantial plugin development.

Substantial active deployments with substantial plugin ecosystem and substantial engineer adoption.

Backstage as service catalog only. Substantial limited use; substantial unfunded opportunity.

Custom developer portals instead of Backstage — substantial in some organizations, frequently substantially less effective than Backstage with appropriate investment.

Where pdpspectra fits#

Our DevOps practice builds production platform-engineering capabilities including Backstage deployment and substantial custom plugin development.

Backstage is substantial framework needing substantial investment. Talk to our team about your platform-engineering strategy.