Well-Architected Go-Live processes and tools for ISV and self-serve guide

The Well-Architected Framework contains a set of processes and tools to help customers review and enhance their workloads on Azure. You can find a detailed explanation on how to use the framework in the Well-Architected Workshop.

This guide is intended to provide you with a step-by-step process to review the architecture of a workload in a “go forward” motion.

Well-Architected Go-Live is designed to review cloud-native workloads. These are workloads that primarily consist of PaaS services such as Azure App Service or Azure Cosmos DB.

The assessment is a cross-pillar offering and helps identify any major risks or concerns that a team should address. It reaches across the five Well-Architected pillars.

Prerequisites

Please review the resources and review introduction set out in the guide for the “Core” Well-Architected assessment.

Select the workload

If you have not done so already, please review the Well-Architected Introduction and Workshop content which will introduce you to the concept of a workload. The Well-Architected Go-Live assessment is run on one specific workload at a time.

Ensure Go-Live is the right choice of assessment

Review the below bullet points to assess if your workload is a good match for the Go-Live assessment. If you find that none or only a few of the descriptions apply, continue with the “Core” Well-Architected assessment instead.

People and Resources

During the assessment you will need to review the motivations of some architectural decisions. Getting a deep understanding of the architecture from the people who built it is essential to delivering a successful Go-Live assessment. You should also involve the operations and development teams for the solution if they are different from the people designing the architecture.

It is strongly recommended that you gain read-only access to the workload in Azure. This will allow you to review Azure Advisor as well as see the deployment in action. If the workload is not in production yet, you can instead request access to a pre-release environment.

Below is a checklist of the requirements:

When delivering an in-depth assessment, you should set up meetings with all key stakeholders to discuss the solution in detail.

Delivery Format

Select the assessment type

There are two ways of running the assessment.

In-depth assessment

Below is an example of a format that the delivery might take.

Day / Time Description
Day 1 / AM Whiteboarding of the workload with the architecture team including a review of all components.
Day 1 / PM Interviews with the operations and development teams to better understand their concerns and involvement with the architecture.
Day 2 / AM Review of the workload on Azure in pre-production including a review of Azure Advisor.
Day 2 / PM Completion of the survey. (either as a group or separately)
Day 3 / AM Reporting and result collection.
Day 3 / PM Presentation of the results. Prioritization of the remediation activity. 
flowchart LR
%%{init: {'flowchart':{'useMaxWidth': true}}}%%
subgraph Discover
A["<h2>Day 1 (Meetings)</h2>Kick-Off<br>Whiteboard and Dashboarding<br>Well-Architected Go-Live survey and interviews"] 
end
subgraph Analyze
C["<h2>Day 2 (Offline Work)</h2>Gather data from Advisor<br>Analyze data<br>Review recommendations"]
end
subgraph Prioritize
E["<h2>Day 3 (Meetings)</h2>Present recommendations<br>Discuss and reprioritize"]
end

A-->C-->E

You should set up meetings and calendar blockers for everyone involved so that they can make sure that they are available for all necessary interviews, whiteboarding sessions, and report read outs.

Information Collection

You will use the Well-Architected Go-Live assessment survey on aka.ms/assessments as your core assessment questionnaire.

Please also review the information collection tools provided as part of the “Core” Well-Architected assessment guide.

If the workload is already deployed in a pre-release subscription you may leverage Azure Advisor and App Service Diagnostics to further enhance the delivery by gather additional recommendations from these tools.

Reporting

The Go-Live assessment is supported by a version of the same reporting tools used in the “Core” Well-Architected assessment. They are located in their own folder in the WellArchitected-Tools repo linked above.

The report generation script operates in largely the same way as the one for the “Core” Well-Architected assessments. You need to run it using the “-AssessmentType Go-Live” option, so that the right PowerPoint template is used. Advisor or App Service Diagnostics recommendations are not automatically integrated, so you may need to adjust your reporting templates as needed. It is highly recommended to review both tools with the customer as part of the information gathering and interviews conducted in a Go-Live assessment.

Please review the report generation script for instructions on how to use it. As well as completing the survey you should critically evaluate the information collected during whiteboarding and the interviews. Please reference the core aspects explored in the different pillar sections in the context of the assessment.

The Go-Live report comes with general priorities, but the specific context of the workload might mean that you need to update these priorities. You should also spend some time applying the concept of the Priority Matrix to work out what recommendations constitute deployment blockers, high risk issues that should be prioritized, and lower risk recommendations that can be implemented eventually.

Reference the content in “Write the roadmap” as part of your reporting on the Go-Live assessment.

Finalize

The in-depth assessment ends with a close out presentation where you present both the high-level findings and your reporting. It’s an opportunity to discuss follow-up remediation activities.

These activities may include: