1. Purpose and scope
A platform is a bet that several products will be cheaper, faster or better if they share architecture, IP, software and tools instead of each being designed alone. The bet only pays if the products really do have enough in common, if the shared parts are designed to be reused by teams that did not build them, and if the company is willing to fund a base that earns nothing until the first products ship on it. This stage decides whether the bet is worth making and, if it is, what exactly the platform will be.
The stage produces three things that every later stage depends on. The first is the platform business case, which compares the cost of building the platform and its products against the cost of building the same products separately, over the platform's whole intended life. The second is the platform definition: the family of products, the common core all of them share, the planned variation points where they may differ and the reuse each product is expected to achieve. The third is the technology feasibility assessment, which shows that the process, key IP, software and tools the platform will depend on can serve those products for long enough.
In scope: the segment and product family analysis, the platform business case, the platform definition, the first commonality and variability analysis and the technology feasibility assessment. Out of scope: the reference architecture itself, which is designed in Reference Architecture & Variability straight after this stage, and the dated roadmap, the lead product choice and IP sourcing, which belong to Roadmap & Derivative Planning once that architecture is baselined.
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