Tools, templates and assessments for the Govern phase of CAF (Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework)
By: Radu Vunvulea
Tags: Migration, Architecture, Azure, Digital Transformation, DevOps

Microsoft is offering an excellent framework to support cloud migration and adoption process –Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

The framework defined an iterative process with the following phases:

Define Strategy Plan Ready Adopt Govern Manage

For each of them, Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) provides us a list of templates, tools, and assessment mechanisms that can help us to improve the adoption and migration process. Let’s take a look at the ones for Govern.

Governance benchmark assessment

Location: https://cafbaseline.com/

Governance, in general, is not an easy task to accomplish. The combination of process, business stakeholders makes it difficult to implement, measure, and prioritize. Inside CAF, cloud governance contains 6 different domains that need to be managed: Deployment Acceleration, Organization Readiness, Resource Consistency, Cost Management, Secure Baseline, Identity Baseline.

In the first phases of a cloud adoption program, it is hard to decide on which governance domain we want to focus on first. This is where Governance benchmark assessment can offer us guidance. The tool helps us to assess the governance level on each domain (score base), identifying the domains where we have big gaps.

CAF Foundation blueprint

Location: https://github.com/Microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/tree/master/ready/migration-landing-zone-governance

It is a basic landing zone blueprint that can be used as a starting point to build our governance. The value of this blueprint is the way how it is structured, covering the 3 pillars of governance through core Resource Groups, basic Azure Policies, and key Azure Services templates. On top of it, technical teams can build the initial landscape, ensuring that they are covering all the dimensions.

Governance discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/governance-discipline-template.docx

Can be used as a starting point at the moment in time when we want to define the governance processes. Offers a good document template that is used to define processes and the way how metrics are measured.

Cost Management discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/cost-management-discipline-template.docx

Similar to the previous template, offering a starting point related to how to do cloud cost management and tracking.

Deployment Acceleration discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/deployment-acceleration-discipline-template.docx

A document template with the main objective to accelerate the deployment, helping us to define the deployment plan, do risk assessment related to it, together with report and audit.

Identity Baseline discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/identity-baseline-discipline-template.docx

A document template that can be used when we define the Identity Baseline, covering aspects like business risk, metrics, and internal or external factors that could require a change in the way how we manage the identity.

Resource Consistency discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/resource-consistency-discipline-template.docx

Defines a document template to ensure that resources are created and managed in the same way across the organization.

Security Baseline discipline template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/govern/security-baseline-discipline-template.docx

Help us to define and mature the security baseline that it is used across the organization for cloud resources.

Azure governance visualizer

Location: https://github.com/JulianHayward/Azure-MG-Sub-Governance-Reporting

The tool creates a high-level view of our current Azure tenant, helping us to identify areas where cloud governance is not implemented as expected. The output of these tools is visual content covering:

Policies

RBAC

Blueprints

Management Groups and Limits

Subscription, Resources and Limits

The output can be generated in different formats (e.g. HTML, MD, CSV) and can be even rendered inside Azure DevOps. This tool can be used with success during the full life-cycle of our cloud journey to do the Governance assessment and generate a visualization of our current Governance implementation.