Search for Well Architected Advice
-
Operational Excellence
-
- Resources have identified owners
- Processes and procedures have identified owners
- Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance
- Team members know what they are responsible for
- Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership
- Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions
- Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated
-
- Executive Sponsorship
- Team members are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk
- Escalation is encouraged
- Communications are timely, clear, and actionable
- Experimentation is encouraged
- Team members are encouraged to maintain and grow their skill sets
- Resource teams appropriately
- Diverse opinions are encouraged and sought within and across teams
-
- Use version control
- Test and validate changes
- Use configuration management systems
- Use build and deployment management systems
- Perform patch management
- Implement practices to improve code quality
- Share design standards
- Use multiple environments
- Make frequent, small, reversible changes
- Fully automate integration and deployment
-
Security
-
- Evaluate and implement new security services and features regularly
- Automate testing and validation of security controls in pipelines
- Identify and prioritize risks using a threat model
- Keep up-to-date with security recommendations
- Keep up-to-date with security threats
- Identify and validate control objectives
- Secure account root user and properties
- Separate workloads using accounts
-
- Analyze public and cross-account access
- Manage access based on life cycle
- Share resources securely with a third party
- Reduce permissions continuously
- Share resources securely within your organization
- Establish emergency access process
- Define permission guardrails for your organization
- Grant least privilege access
- Define access requirements
-
- Build a program that embeds security ownership in workload teams
- Centralize services for packages and dependencies
- Manual code reviews
- Automate testing throughout the development and release lifecycle
- Train for application security
- Regularly assess security properties of the pipelines
- Deploy software programmatically
- Perform regular penetration testing
-
-
Reliability
-
- How do you ensure sufficient gap between quotas and maximum usage to accommodate failover?
- How do you automate quota management?
- How do you monitor and manage service quotas?
- How do you accommodate fixed service quotas and constraints through architecture?
- How do you manage service quotas and constraints across accounts and Regions?
- How do you manage service quotas and constraints?
- How do you build a program that embeds reliability into workload teams?
-
- How do you enforce non-overlapping private IP address ranges in all private address spaces?
- How do you prefer hub-and-spoke topologies over many-to-many mesh?
- How do you ensure IP subnet allocation accounts for expansion and availability?
- How do you provision redundant connectivity between private networks in the cloud and on-premises environments?
- How do you use highly available network connectivity for workload public endpoints?
-
- Monitor end-to-end tracing of requests through your system
- Conduct reviews regularly
- Analytics
- Automate responses (Real-time processing and alarming)
- Send notifications (Real-time processing and alarming)
- Define and calculate metrics (Aggregation)
- Monitor End-to-End Tracing of Requests Through Your System
-
- Monitor all components of the workload to detect failures
- Fail over to healthy resources
- Automate healing on all layers
- Rely on the data plane and not the control plane during recovery
- Use static stability to prevent bimodal behavior
- Send notifications when events impact availability
- Architect your product to meet availability targets and uptime service level agreements (SLAs)
-
-
Cost Optimization
-
- Establish ownership of cost optimization
- Establish a partnership between finance and technology
- Establish cloud budgets and forecasts
- Implement cost awareness in your organizational processes
- Monitor cost proactively
- Keep up-to-date with new service releases
- Quantify business value from cost optimization
- Report and notify on cost optimization
- Create a cost-aware culture
-
- Perform cost analysis for different usage over time
- Analyze all components of this workload
- Perform a thorough analysis of each component
- Select components of this workload to optimize cost in line with organization priorities
- Perform cost analysis for different usage over time
- Select software with cost effective licensing
-
-
Performance
-
- Learn about and understand available cloud services and features
- Evaluate how trade-offs impact customers and architecture efficiency
- Use guidance from your cloud provider or an appropriate partner to learn about architecture patterns and best practices
- Factor cost into architectural decisions
- Use policies and reference architectures
- Use benchmarking to drive architectural decisions
- Use a data-driven approach for architectural choices
-
- Use purpose-built data store that best support your data access and storage requirements
- Collect and record data store performance metrics
- Evaluate available configuration options for data store
- Implement Strategies to Improve Query Performance in Data Store
- Implement data access patterns that utilize caching
-
- Understand how networking impacts performance
- Evaluate available networking features
- Choose appropriate dedicated connectivity or VPN for your workload
- Use load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple resources
- Choose network protocols to improve performance
- Choose your workload's location based on network requirements
- Optimize network configuration based on metrics
-
- Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure workload health and performance
- Use monitoring solutions to understand the areas where performance is most critical
- Define a process to improve workload performance
- Review metrics at regular intervals
- Load test your workload
- Use automation to proactively remediate performance-related issues
- Keep your workload and services up-to-date
-
-
Sustainability
-
- Optimize geographic placement of workloads based on their networking requirements
- Align SLAs with sustainability goals
- Optimize geographic placement of workloads based on their networking requirements
- Stop the creation and maintenance of unused assets
- Optimize team member resources for activities performed
- Implement buffering or throttling to flatten the demand curve
-
- Optimize software and architecture for asynchronous and scheduled jobs
- Remove or refactor workload components with low or no use
- Optimize areas of code that consume the most time or resources
- Optimize impact on devices and equipment
- Use software patterns and architectures that best support data access and storage patterns
- Remove unneeded or redundant data
- Use technologies that support data access and storage patterns
- Use policies to manage the lifecycle of your datasets
- Use shared file systems or storage to access common data
- Back up data only when difficult to recreate
- Use elasticity and automation to expand block storage or file system
- Minimize data movement across networks
-
- Articles coming soon
< All Topics
Print
Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated
PostedNovember 6, 2024
UpdatedNovember 7, 2024
ByKevin McCaffrey
Predefining or Negotiating Responsibilities Between Teams
To optimize collaboration and ensure smooth operations, responsibilities between teams should either be predefined or negotiated. Clear agreements between teams, such as service-level agreements (SLAs) or service-level objectives (SLOs), help set expectations and streamline communication. This structure allows teams to better understand their impact on business outcomes and prioritize tasks accordingly.
Define or Negotiate Inter-Team Agreements
Establish defined or negotiated agreements between teams that outline how they will work together and support each other. These agreements could include response times, SLOs, or SLAs that help set clear expectations for collaboration. Predefined agreements help minimize misunderstandings and ensure teams are aligned on responsibilities and expectations.
Document Inter-Team Communication Channels
Document the channels of communication between teams to ensure clarity and efficiency. Having well-defined communication channels enables teams to know whom to contact for support, how to escalate issues, and how to share information effectively. This helps reduce communication delays and ensures all stakeholders are informed.
Understand the Impact on Business Outcomes
Help teams understand how their work affects overall business outcomes and the outcomes of other teams. This understanding informs task prioritization and helps teams align their efforts to maximize their impact. Clear insights into how each team’s work contributes to broader objectives promote effective cross-functional collaboration.
Use Metrics to Track and Enforce Agreements
Use metrics to track performance against predefined agreements. Metrics provide transparency into how well teams are meeting their responsibilities under SLAs or SLOs. Regularly reviewing these metrics helps in identifying gaps, fostering accountability, and driving improvements in collaboration.
Supporting Questions
- What predefined or negotiated agreements exist between teams for collaboration and support?
- How are inter-team communication channels documented?
- How do teams understand the impact of their work on overall business outcomes?
Roles and Responsibilities
Team Lead
Responsibilities:
- Establish and negotiate agreements with other teams, such as SLAs or SLOs.
- Document and communicate inter-team agreements to ensure alignment and understanding.
Team Member
Responsibilities:
- Adhere to predefined inter-team agreements, including response times and service objectives.
- Utilize documented communication channels for collaboration and support.
Service Owner
Responsibilities:
- Monitor team performance against SLAs and SLOs.
- Use metrics to evaluate adherence to agreements and drive continuous improvement in collaboration.
Artifacts
- Service-Level Agreement Document: A document detailing SLAs, including response times, support responsibilities, and metrics for evaluating compliance.
- Communication Channel Directory: A directory that outlines the communication channels between teams, including contact points and escalation procedures.
- Performance Metrics Report: A report tracking performance against SLAs or SLOs, highlighting areas of success and areas for improvement.
Relevant AWS Tools
Collaboration and Documentation Tools
- AWS WorkDocs: Provides a centralized repository for storing inter-team agreements, communication procedures, and related documentation.
- Amazon Chime: Facilitates real-time communication and meetings between teams, helping teams adhere to predefined communication channels.
Monitoring and Metrics Tools
- AWS CloudWatch: Monitors metrics related to service levels and helps evaluate whether teams are meeting SLAs or SLOs.
- AWS X-Ray: Helps trace requests across services, providing insights into how different teams’ services interact and identifying potential bottlenecks.
Escalation and Notification Tools
- AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service): Sends notifications to stakeholders when predefined metrics, such as response times, are not met.
- AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager: Provides structured workflows for managing incidents and supports escalation processes between teams to meet SLAs.
Table of Contents