Well-Architected Review

Step 1: Define the workload scope

What workload would you like me to review? Please share:

• Workload name and brief description
• Architecture diagram or description (services, data flows, integrations)
• Business criticality (revenue-generating, internal tool, compliance-sensitive, etc.)
• Current pain points (optional — anything you already know is problematic)

Step 2: Identify applicable lens

• SaaS, Serverless, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, IoT, SAP, Games, Financial Services, Healthcare, etc.

Step 3: Evaluate each pillar

Operational Excellence

• How are changes deployed? (CI/CD, IaC, rollback strategy)
• How is the workload monitored? (metrics, alarms, dashboards)
• How are operational events handled? (runbooks, on-call, post-incident reviews)
• Is there a continuous improvement process?

Security

• How are identities and permissions managed? (IAM, least privilege, federation)
• How is data protected? (encryption at rest/transit, key management)
• How are security events detected and responded to? (GuardDuty, Security Hub, incident response)
• Is network segmentation in place? (VPC, WAF, private subnets)

Reliability

• How does the workload handle component failures? (multi-AZ, retries, circuit breakers)
• How is capacity managed? (auto-scaling, load testing, quotas)
• How are changes managed to avoid outages? (deployment strategies, health checks)
• Are backups and DR tested?

Performance Efficiency

• Are the right resource types and sizes selected? (instance types, storage tiers, Graviton)
• How is performance monitored? (latency percentiles, bottleneck identification)
• Are there opportunities for caching, CDN, or async processing?
• Are database access patterns optimized?

Cost Optimization

• Are resources right-sized? (utilization metrics, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances)
• Are there idle or orphaned resources?
• Is the pricing model appropriate? (on-demand vs spot vs reserved, serverless vs provisioned)
• Is cost visibility and allocation in place?

Sustainability

• Is resource utilization maximized? (right-sizing, scaling to zero)
• Are managed services used where possible?
• Is data lifecycle managed? (tiering, expiration, compression)
• Are efficient compute options used? (Graviton, serverless)

Step 4: Classify findings

• Severity: 🔴 High Risk Issue (HRI) | 🟡 Medium Risk Issue (MRI) | 🟢 Improvement opportunity
• Pillar: Which pillar it belongs to
• Impact: What could go wrong if not addressed
• Effort: Low / Medium / High to remediate
• AWS Services: Which services to use for remediation

• If the architecture already follows best practices (multi-AZ, WAF, canary deployments, encryption, monitoring), most findings should be 🟢 Improvement opportunities — not 🔴 HRI
• A mature architecture should score 4–5 on most pillars. Resist over-flagging where good practices exist.
• For well-architected systems, focus on advanced improvements: chaos engineering, multi-region DR, cost modeling, game days, sustainability gains
• Acknowledge existing strengths explicitly before listing gaps

Step 5: Produce the report

# Well-Architected Review: {Workload Name}

## Summary
- **Date**: {date}
- **Pillars reviewed**: 6/6
- **Lens applied**: {lens or "General"}
- **Findings**: {X} HRI, {Y} MRI, {Z} Improvements

## Pillar Scorecard
| Pillar | Score (1-5) | Key Gap |
|--------|-------------|---------|
| Operational Excellence | {score} | {gap} |
| Security | {score} | {gap} |
| Reliability | {score} | {gap} |
| Performance Efficiency | {score} | {gap} |
| Cost Optimization | {score} | {gap} |
| Sustainability | {score} | {gap} |

## High Risk Issues
{For each HRI: pillar, description, impact, recommendation, effort, AWS services to use}

## Medium Risk Issues
{For each MRI: pillar, description, impact, recommendation, effort, AWS services}

## Improvement Opportunities
{For each improvement: pillar, description, benefit, recommendation, AWS services}

## Prioritized Remediation Plan

### Quick Wins (< 1 week)
{Low-effort, high-impact fixes — configuration changes, enabling services}

### Foundation (1-4 weeks)
{Core architectural improvements — multi-AZ, monitoring, CI/CD}

### Strategic (1-3 months)
{Major changes — re-architecture, multi-region, compliance programs}

## Next Steps
{Concrete actions the team should take this week}

Step 6: Offer follow-up

Would you like me to:

• Deep-dive into any specific pillar?
• Create an implementation plan for a specific finding?
• Generate IaC templates to remediate an issue?
• Compare alternative approaches for a recommendation?
• Run a focused assessment (security, reliability, cost, etc.)?