Do you use the Well-Architected Framework?

The Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices which form a repeatable process for designing solution architecture, to help identify potential issues and optimize workloads.

Figure: The Well-Architected Framework includes the five pillars of architectural excellence. Surrounding the Well-Architected Framework are six supporting elements

The 5 Pillars

• Reliability – Handling and recovering from failures https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/resiliency/principles?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-33518
• Cost Optimization – Minimizing costs without impacting workload performance https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/cost/principles?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-33518
• Performance Efficiency (Scalability) – Testing, monitoring and adapting to changes in load e.g. new product launch, Black Friday sale, etc. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/scalability/principles?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-33518
• Security – Protecting from threats and bad actors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/security/security-principles?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-33518
• Operational Excellence (DevOps) – Deploying and managing workloads once deployed https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/devops/principles?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-33518

Trade-offs

There are trade-offs to be made between these pillars. E.g. improving reliability by adding Azure regions and backup points will increase the cost.

Why use it?

Thinking about architecting workloads can be hard – you need to think about many different issues and trade-offs, with varying contexts between them. WAF gives you a consistent process for approaching this to make sure nothing gets missed and all the variables are considered.

Just like Agile, this is intended to be applied for continuous improvement throughout development and not just an initial step when starting a new project. It is less about architecting the perfect workload and more about maintaining a well-architected state and an understanding of optimizations that could be implemented.

What to do next?

Assess your workload against the 5 Pillars of WAF with the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Review and add any recommendations from the assessment results to your backlog.

Figure: Some recommendations will be checked, others go to the backlog so the Product Owner can prioritize

Figure: Recommended actions results show things to be improved

✅ Figure: Good example - WAF is very visible to the Product Owner on the backlog

Review at the start and before go-live

One review at the end finds problems when it is too late to fix them. Do it at least twice:

1. At the start - Review the design before you build, while a gap is still cheap to fix
2. Before go-live - Review what was built. Microsoft has a Go-Live | Well-Architected Review for this
3. Save a milestone each time - The next review then shows what improved and what is still open

For an AI project, also do the Azure Well-Architected AI workload assessment.

❌ Figure: Bad example - The only review is at the end, so the findings come too late

✅ Figure: Good example - Reviewed at the start and before go-live, with a milestone each time