An outside view
The client wanted an independent view of its own platform: how secure, reliable and ready to operate and grow it was, and where the risks and unnecessary costs were. There was no consolidated diagnosis. The knowledge was spread across the people on the team and the environment itself.
The autopsy
I started by mapping the platform from the inside, in what we call the autopsy: architecture, components and features, from the real environment and not only from the documentation. Documentation describes how a system should be; the environment shows how it is.
With the map ready, I assessed the platform across seven dimensions, each with a simple question. For security, whether data, access and infrastructure were protected. For reliability, whether the platform withstood failures and recovered from them. For availability, whether the service was up when customers needed it. For operability, whether the team could run, ship and change things safely. For observability, whether you could tell what was happening, and why, at any moment. For cost, whether the money spent on cloud created value. And for governance, whether there were standards, owners and control over the environment.
From report to decision
I wrote the assessment document with the findings and recommendations in order of priority. Then I revised and deepened it in a second version and presented the results to the client.
The main care went into the form. A technical finding only leads to a decision if the person deciding understands the risk it represents. So every item came with the risk explained in business language and a clear priority, rather than as one more line in a list of problems.
What changed
The client now has, in a single document, an end-to-end diagnosis of the platform, with risks and improvement opportunities organized by dimension and priority.
What I take from it
An assessment only creates value if the people deciding can act on it. The technical work finds the problems; translating them into risk and priority is what gets someone to fix them.