Guidelines and steps

The three primary phases are discovery, design, and implementation. This section covers inputs required from other workstreams and outputs expected from each phase.

Discovery is the first phase. It forms the basis of operations readiness. During discovery, you should:

• Hold workshop or kickoff meetings to come up with a prioritized list of operational domains that need to be modernized.

• Gather as much information as possible to get the big picture of your processes and procedures.

• Review documentation, such as playbooks, runbooks, and organizational charts.

• Speak to application owners, support staff, and business owners to create a full picture of pain points.

• Review service-level agreements (SLAs), operational-level agreements (OLAs), and disaster recovery and backup strategies.

The design phase usually begins soon after discovery and before implementation, but you can perform design and implementation in the same sprint. During the design phase, you use the information you gathered during discovery to address gaps and change, improve, or even eliminate processes and procedures.

Because the design and implementation phases form the basis of operational automation and integration, everything must be in place and production-ready before the go-live date. For information about what to account for during the design and implementation phases, see the Best practices and recommendations section.

Perform these phases in a logical manner in one or more sprints. Deliver core operations functions or other prioritized domains. You can capture the work for each phase in a cloud playbook. A playbook can take the form of scripts, automated runbooks, or even a summary of processes or steps required to operate your modernized environment.

The following diagram shows the 15 OI domains organized in 4 functions: core operations, security and control, business management, and supporting functions.