Foundational capabilities - An Overview of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework

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Foundational capabilities

Each of the transformation domains described in the preceding section is enabled by a set of foundational capabilities shown in the following figure. A capability is an organizational ability to leverage processes to deploy resources (people, technology, and any other tangible or intangible assets) to achieve a particular outcome. AWS CAF capabilities provide best practice guidance that helps you improve your cloud readiness (your ability to effectively leverage cloud to digitally transform). AWS CAF groups its capabilities in six perspectives: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations. Each perspective comprises a set of capabilities that functionally related stakeholders own or manage in your cloud transformation journey.

A diagram depicting AWS CAF foundational capabilities.

AWS CAF perspectives and foundational capabilities

  • Business perspective helps ensure that your cloud investments accelerate your digital transformation ambitions and business outcomes. Common stakeholders include chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief operations officer (COO), chief information officer (CIO), and chief technology officer (CTO).

  • People perspective serves as a bridge between technology and business, accelerating the cloud journey to help organizations more rapidly evolve to a culture of continuous growth, learning, and where change becomes business-as-normal, with focus on culture, organizational structure, leadership, and workforce. Common stakeholders include CIO, COO, CTO, cloud director, and cross-functional and enterprise-wide leaders.

  • Governance perspective helps you orchestrate your cloud initiatives while maximizing organizational benefits and minimizing transformation-related risks. Common stakeholders include chief transformation officer, CIO, CTO, CFO, chief data officer (CDO), and chief risk officer (CRO).

  • Platform perspective helps you build an enterprise-grade, scalable, hybrid cloud platform, modernize existing workloads, and implement new cloud-native solutions. Common stakeholders include CTO, technology leaders, architects, and engineers.

  • Security perspective helps you achieve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data and cloud workloads. Common stakeholders include chief information security officer (CISO), chief compliance officer (CCO), internal audit leaders, and security architects and engineers.

  • Operations perspective helps ensure that your cloud services are delivered at a level that meets the needs of your business. Common stakeholders include infrastructure and operations leaders, site reliability engineers, and information technology service managers.