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OPS 2: How do you structure your organization to support your business outcomes?

Your teams must understand their part in achieving business outcomes. Teams need to understand their roles in the success of other teams, the role of other teams in their success, and have shared goals. Understanding responsibility, ownership, how decisions are made, and who has authority to make decisions will help focus efforts and maximize the benefits from your teams.

Best Practices:

Improvement Plan

Resources have identified owners

  • Resources have identified owners: Define what ownership means for the resource use cases in your environment. Specify and record owners for resources including at a minimum name, contact information, organization, and team. Store resource ownership information with resources using metadata such as tags or resource groups. Use AWS Organizations to structure accounts and implement policies to ensure ownership and contact information are captured.
  • Processes and procedures have identified owners

  • Process and Procedures have identified owners responsible for their definition: Capture the processes and procedures used in your environment and the individual or team responsible for their definition.
  • Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance

  • Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance: Capture the responsibility for performing processes and procedures used in your environment
  • Team members know what they are responsible for

  • Enure team members understand their roles and responsibilities: Identify team members roles and responsibilities and ensure they understand the expectations of their role. Make this information discoverable so that members of your organization can identify who they need to contact, team or individual, for specific needs.
  • Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership

  • Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership: Provide accessible mechanisms for members of your organization to discover and identify ownership and responsibility. This will enable them to identify who to contact, team or individual, for specific needs.
  • Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions

  • Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions: When standards are rigid innovation is constrained. Provide mechanisms for members of your organization to make requests to owners of processes, procedures, and resources in support of their business needs.
  • Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated

  • Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated: Specifying the methods by which teams interact, and the information necessary for them to support each other, can help minimize the delay introduced as requests are iteratively reviewed and clarified. Having specific agreements that define expectations (for example, response time, or fulfillment time) enables teams to make effective plans and resource appropriately.