This content is outdated. This version of the Well-Architected Framework is now found at: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_us/wellarchitected/2022-03-31/framework/performance-efficiency.html

PERF 6: How do you evolve your workload to take advantage of new releases?

When architecting workloads, there are finite options that you can choose from. However, over time, new technologies and approaches become available that could improve the performance of your workload.

Resources

What's New
AWS Blog
Amazon Web Services YouTube Channel
AWS Online Tech Talks YouTube Channel
AWS Events YouTube Channel

Best Practices:

Stay up-to-date on new resources and services: Evaluate ways to improve performance as new services, design patterns, and product offerings become available. Determine which of these could improve performance or increase the efficiency of the workload through ad-hoc evaluation, internal discussion, or external analysis.
Define a process to improve workload performance: Define a process to evaluate new services, design patterns, resource types, and configurations as they become available. For example, run existing performance tests on new instance offerings to determine their potential to improve your workload.
Evolve workload performance over time: As an organization, use the information gathered through the evaluation process to actively drive adoption of new services or resources when they become available.

Improvement Plan

Stay up-to-date on new resources and services

Evaluate updates and releases: Define a process to evaluate updates, new features, and services from AWS. For example, building proof-of-concepts that use new technologies. When trying new ideas or services, run performance tests to measure the impact on the efficiency or performance of the workload. Take advantage of the flexibility that you have in AWS to test new ideas or technologies frequently with minimal cost or risk.
What's New with AWS
AWS Blog

Define a process to improve workload performance

Identify the key performance constraints for your workload: Document your workload’s performance constraints so that you know what kinds of innovation might improve the performance of your workload.

Evolve workload performance over time

Evolve your workload over time: Use the information you gather when evaluating new services or technologies to drive change. As your business or workload changes, performance needs also change. Use data gathered from your workload metrics to evaluate areas where you can achieve the biggest gains in efficiency or performance, and proactively adopt new services and technologies to keep up with demand.