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OPS01-BP01 Evaluate external customer needs - AWS Well-Architected Framework (2022-03-31)

OPS01-BP01 Evaluate external customer needs

Involve key stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams, to determine where to focus efforts on external customer needs. This will ensure that you have a thorough understanding of the operations support that is required to achieve your desired business outcomes.

Common anti-patterns:

  • You have decided not to have customer support outside of core business hours, but you haven't reviewed historical support request data. You do not know whether this will have an impact on your customers.

  • You are developing a new feature but have not engaged your customers to find out if it is desired, if desired in what form, and without experimentation to validate the need and method of delivery.

Benefits of establishing this best practice: Customers whose needs are satisfied are much more likely to remain customers. Evaluating and understanding external customer needs will inform how you prioritize your efforts to deliver business value.

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: High

Implementation guidance

  • Understand business needs: Business success is enabled by shared goals and understanding across stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams.

    • Review business goals, needs, and priorities of external customers: Engage key stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams, to discuss goals, needs, and priorities of external customers. This ensures that you have a thorough understanding of the operational support that is required to achieve business and customer outcomes.

    • Establish shared understanding: Establish shared understanding of the business functions of the workload, the roles of each of the teams in operating the workload, and how these factors support your shared business goals across internal and external customers.

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