Get started: Improve reliability with the right controls

How do you apply the right controls to improve reliability? This article helps you minimize disruptions related to:

  • Inconsistencies in configuration.
  • Resource organization.
  • Security baselines.
  • Resource protection.

The steps in this article help the operations team balance reliability and cost across the IT portfolio. This article also helps the governance team to ensure that balance is applied consistently. Reliability also depends on other roles and functions. This article maps supporting functions to help you create alignment among the involved teams.

Operations management and governance are equal partners in enterprise reliability. The decisions you make about operational practices set the baseline for reliability. The approaches used to govern the overall environment ensure consistency across all resources.

The first two steps in this article help both teams get started. They're listed sequentially, but you can perform them in parallel. The subsequent steps help you get the entire enterprise started on a shared journey toward more reliable solutions throughout the enterprise.

Step 1: Establish operations management requirements

Not all workloads are created equal. In any environment, there are workloads that have a direct and constant impact on the business. There are also supporting business processes and workloads that have a smaller impact on the overall business. In this step, the cloud operations team identifies and implements initial requirements to support the overall IT portfolio.

Deliverables:

  • Implement a management baseline to define the standard operations that are required for all production workloads.
  • Negotiate business commitments with the cloud strategy team to develop a plan for advanced operations and resiliency requirements.
  • Expand your management baseline, if additional operations are required for the majority of workloads.
  • Apply advanced operations requirements to landing zones and resources that support the workloads that are most critical.
  • Document operations decisions across the IT portfolio in the operations management workbook.

Guidance to support deliverable completion:


Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud adoption team
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Step 2: Consistently apply the management baseline

    Enterprise reliability requires consistent application of the management baseline. That consistency comes from appropriate corporate policy, IT processes, and automated tools. These resources govern the implementation of the management baseline for all affected resources.

    Deliverable:

    Ensure proper application of the management baseline for all affected systems.

    Guidance to support deliverable completion:

    Note

    Steps to start reliability partnerships with other teams: Various decisions throughout the cloud adoption lifecycle can have a direct impact on reliability. The following steps outline the partnerships and supporting efforts required to deliver consistent reliability across the IT portfolio.


    Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Step 3: Define your strategy

    Strategic decisions directly affect reliability. They ripple through the adoption lifecycle and into long-term operations. Strategic clarity improves reliability efforts.

    Deliverables:

    • Record motivations, outcomes, and business justification in the strategy and plan template.
    • Ensure the management baseline provides operational support that aligns to the strategic direction of cloud adoption.

    Guidance to support deliverable completion:

    • Understand motivations: Critical business events and some migration motivations tend to be cost sensitive. These areas can increase the importance of cost control for all later efforts. Other forward-looking motivations related to innovation or growth through migration might be focused more on top-line revenue. Understanding motivations helps you prioritize your cost management.
    • Business outcomes: Some fiscal outcomes tend to be extremely cost sensitive. When the desired outcomes map to fiscal metrics, you should invest early in the Cost Management governance discipline.
    • Business justification: The business justification serves as a high-level view of the overall financial plan for cloud adoption. It can be a good source for initial budgeting efforts.

    Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Step 4: Develop a cloud adoption plan

    The digital estate (or analysis of the existing IT portfolio) can help you to validate the business justification. It can provide a refined view of the overall IT portfolio. The adoption plan provides clarity on the timeline of activities during adoption.

    When you align the adoption plan with the digital estate analysis, you can plan for future operations management dependencies. Understanding the adoption plan also invites the cloud operations team into the development cycles. They can evaluate and plan for any changes to the management baseline that are required to provide workload operations.

    Deliverables:

    • Update the strategy and plan template to reflect changes that are needed to achieve the desired strategy. The changes recorded can include:

      • An assessment of the existing digital estate.
      • A cloud adoption plan that reflects the required changes and the work involved.
      • The organizational change that's required to deliver on the plan.
      • A plan for addressing the skills that are needed to enable the existing team to successfully complete the required work.
    • Work with the governance team to align cost models and forecast models. This process includes efforts to start optimizing spend through quantitative analysis.

    Guidance to support deliverable completion:


    Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud adoption team
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Step 5: Implement landing zone best practices

    The Ready methodology of the Cloud Adoption Framework focuses heavily on the development of landing zones to host workloads in the cloud. During landing zone implementation, multiple decisions could affect operations. Consult the cloud operations team to help review the landing zone for operations improvements. Also consult the cloud governance team to understand Resource Consistency policies and design guidance that might affect the landing zone design.

    Deliverables:

    • Deploy one or more landing zones capable of hosting workloads in the short-term adoption plan.
    • Ensure that all landing zones meet operations decisions and resource consistency requirements.

    Guidance to support deliverable completion:


    Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud adoption team
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Step 6: Complete waves of adoption effort and change

    Long-term operations can be affected by the decisions made during migration and innovation efforts. Maintaining consistent alignment early in adoption processes helps to remove barriers to production releases. It also reduces the effort that's required to introduce new solutions into operations management practices.

    Deliverables:

    • Test operational readiness of production deployments by using Resource Consistency policies.
    • Validate adherence to resource consistency design guidance and operations requirements.
    • Document any advanced operations requirements in the operations management workbook.

    Guidance to support deliverable completion:


    Accountable team Responsible and supporting teams
  • Cloud adoption team
  • Cloud strategy team
  • Cloud operations team
  • Cloud governance team
  • Cloud center of excellence or central IT team
  • Value statement

    These steps help you to implement the controls and processes that are needed to ensure reliability across the enterprise and all hosted resources.