Beating the Buzzer - Creating Developer Velocity at the NBA

Discover how the NBA's platform engineering team transformed developer productivity and delivery speed in this 17-minute conference talk from PlatformCon 2025. Learn about the comprehensive strategy that increased development velocity by 400% since 2019, reduced release cycles to under an hour, and cut incidents by 50% while supporting fan experiences across 200+ countries. Explore the winning technical playbook including cloud frameworks for seamless deployment, reusable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) modules that eliminate repetitive work, CI/CD pipelines with integrated shift-left security practices, and AI-powered development tools that accelerate coding workflows. Examine how these platform engineering capabilities powered the award-winning Referee Engagement and Performance System (REPS), which revolutionized officiating workflows and demonstrates real-world application of these principles. Understand the measurable business impact, including a 20-point increase in developer engagement scores driven by improved platform services, enabling development teams to focus on creating exceptional user experiences rather than managing infrastructure complexity. Gain insights into building championship-level delivery systems that help development teams consistently beat tight deadlines while maintaining high quality and reliability standards in a fast-paced digital sports environment.