Golden Path
One opinionated end-to-end route from idea to production that is genuinely easier than the alternatives, and is supported rather than mandated.
A golden path is a complete journey, not a set of approved components. It starts at "I need a new service" and ends at "it is in production with monitoring, alerting, CI, secrets and an on-call rota", and every step in between has a supported answer.
The design constraint is that it must be easier than not using it. If following the path means filling in a request form and waiting three days while doing it yourself takes an afternoon, teams will do it themselves, and no policy will reliably prevent that. Adoption is a usability outcome, not a compliance one.
Two failure modes bracket it. Too narrow, and the path serves only the median service, so anything unusual leaves it immediately and gains nothing. Too broad, and it is not a path but a catalogue of options, which returns the decision cost it existed to remove. The useful shape is one strongly opinionated route plus a documented, supported way to deviate — because the deviations are where the platform learns what to build next.