Well-Architected Review Process
Published: 2022-04-19 23:17:58

## Measure your architecture against best practices using the AWS Well-Architected Tool

Now that you have learned about the Well-Architected Framework and its components, in this post we will focus on the AWS Well-Architected Tool.

The AWS Well-Architected Tool is organized by pillar questions and is used when performing a Well-Architected Review. This review helps customers measure their architecture against AWS best practices. The AWS Well-Architected Tool helps you guide deeper conversations around your architectures and should not be used as a checklist.

## What are the benefits of using the AWS Well-ARchitected Tool?

The AWS Well-Architected Tool gives you quick access to the knowledge in the Well-Architected Framework and is the easiest way to conduct the Well-Architected Review.

### Get free architectural guidance

Gives you access to knowledge and best practices used by AWS architects, whenever you need it. You answer a series of questions about your workload. The AWS Well-Architected Tool delivers an improvement plan with step-by-step guidance on how to build better workloads in the cloud.

### Review your workloads consistently

Provides a single tool and consistent process to help you review and measure your cloud architectures. It is meant to be used as a repeatable process for the multiple workloads across your organization.

### Identify and implement improvements

Supports continuous improvement through the workload lifecycles. The tool helps you save point-in-time milestones and track changes to your workloads.

## What is the intent of the Well-Architected Review?

### Not an audit

The Well-Architected Review is about a team working together to figure out how to improve your architectures.

### Not architecture astronauts

The Well-Architected Review is pragmatic, proven advice that AWS has identified through other successful customers.

### Not a one-time check

The Well-Architected Review should be a continuous process, completed early and often through your architecture's lifecycle.

## How does the AWS Well-Architected Tool work?

1. **Identify workload and answer questions** - Identify the workload to document. Then, answer a series of questions about your architecture.

2. **Compare to pillar best practices** - Review your answers against the five pillars established by the Well-Architected Framework:
     - Operational Excellence
     - Security
     - Reliability
     - Performance Efficiency
     - Cost Optimization

3. **Media** - Receive videos and documentation,
4. **Report** - Generate a report that summarizes your workload review.
5. **Dashboard** - View the result of reviews in a single dashboard.

## When should a Well-Architected Review be conducted?

Ideally, a Well-Architected Review should be conducted periodically over the lifetime of an application, during milestones. Although a review before an application goes into production is a good idea, this is not enough. Any issues detected right before production would tale longer to fix than if caught earlier during development.

AWS also frequently releases new services, and we, as a community, are constantly learning better ways to architect and take advantage of the cloud. This means that even after an application is in production, periodic reviews can identify missed opportunities.

> After a review, you should have a list of issues to prioritize based on your business context.