Running a WAFR

Communicate positive intent: Revisit the positive intent of the WAFR with the participants. Critical conversations about work can be difficult, so reaffirm that the WAFR is being conducted to find improvement opportunities. Reinforce a no blame culture. There is no attack or defense, but rather a collaborative discussion about architectural improvement.

Bring a supporter: Navigating a complex workload architecture, asking questions, moderating responses, and taking notes can be challenging for one person. A successful WAFR is a team activity. Designate alternate roles, which allows one person to run the review while another takes notes, checks the documentation, and monitors the discussion.

Stay on topic: It's common when having group conversations around architectural decisions for people to get sidetracked. If you want to be efficient with time, make sure that WAFR participants respectfully hold each other to stay on topic. Capture side concepts and ideas in a centralized place that can be picked up during future discussion sessions.

Take good notes: Simply ticking boxes in the WA Tool does not provide context to someone revisiting the WAFR in later milestones. Use the notes box in the WA Tool, or create an external document linked from the WAFR notes box if you exceed the character limit. Context helps other parties, especially people who are new to the workload, understand ongoing work and determine what to prioritize.

Don't focus on solutions: Focus on capturing data points about the workload rather than solutions. Too much focus on solutions can waste time during your WAFR session and prevent you from capturing important data points. It's not the best use of other participants' time if you brainstorm something that is out of scope.

Focus on the workload, not the tool: It's common for people to share their screen showing the Well-Architected Tool (WA Tool) in the AWS Management Console. Although capturing data in the WA Tool is crucial, don't focus exclusively on the tool. Focus your discussion on the architecture instead. Keep the review conversational, and paraphrase the questions to align with the context.

Divide the discussion into parts: It can be difficult to review all six pillars in one meeting. Spread the review out into smaller sessions, which allows for a more topic-targeted approach and can be easier to schedule with your participants.

Remember to take breaks: Reviewing architecture thoroughly can be tiring for participants, and their concentration can lapse over time. Schedule frequent breaks during the WAFR. Be frugal with participants' time, and allow for people to drop when they are no longer required.

Think carefully about maybes: If you find the answer for a question is "maybe," "kind of," or "we have something in the backlog to address that," carefully consider if this actually means "no." A WAFR is about capturing the honest and current state of the workload, not the intended state.

Consider trade-offs: Well-Architected is about making trade-offs between pillars. To make a workload more resilient might come at the detriment of your cost optimization, or further optimizing cost might have an impact on your workload's environmental impact. The pillars are there to provide a structure for your conversations and to help you make informed architectural choices.

Recognize that no workload can be perfect: Workloads are rarely perfect and often do not need to be. Avoid turning your WAFR into an exercise of making everything perfect, and focus on making the workload function safely and efficiently for its intended business purpose.