Golden path (in software)

What is golden path in software?

A golden path in software is a standardized, opinionated, and supported set of tools, processes, and best practices for common tasks, such as building and deploying applications.

Provides developers with a streamlined and efficient "approved way" of working, reducing complexity, decision fatigue, and technical debt.

By offering a well-defined and templated route, golden paths allow developers to focus on delivering business value rather than reinventing infrastructure and tooling, ultimately accelerating delivery velocity and improving consistency across an organization.

Golden path in platform engineering:

Instead of a new team having to figure out logging, monitoring, and CI/CD from scratch, a Spring Boot golden path would provide a ready-to-use template with pre-configured logging, monitoring, and deployment pipelines, allowing the team to focus on their application code.