# 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. **Topics** + [ # OPS02-BP01 Resources have identified owners ](ops_ops_model_def_resource_owners.md) + [ # OPS02-BP02 Processes and procedures have identified owners ](ops_ops_model_def_proc_owners.md) + [ # OPS02-BP03 Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance ](ops_ops_model_def_activity_owners.md) + [ # OPS02-BP04 Team members know what they are responsible for ](ops_ops_model_know_my_job.md) + [ # OPS02-BP05 Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership ](ops_ops_model_find_owner.md) + [ # OPS02-BP06 Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions ](ops_ops_model_req_add_chg_exception.md) + [ # OPS02-BP07 Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated ](ops_ops_model_def_neg_team_agreements.md) # OPS02-BP01 Resources have identified owners Understand who has ownership of each application, workload, platform, and infrastructure component, what business value is provided by that component, and why that ownership exists. Understanding the business value of these individual components and how they support business outcomes informs the processes and procedures applied against them. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Understanding ownership identifies whom can approve improvements, implement those improvements, or both. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High ## Implementation guidance + 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. + Define forms of ownership and how they are assigned: Ownership may have multiple definitions in your organization with different uses cases. You may wish to define a workload owner as the individual who owns the risk and liability for the operation of a workload, and whom ultimately has authority to make decisions about the workload. You may wish to define ownership in terms of financial or administrative responsibility where ownership rolls up to a parent organization. A developer may be the owner of their development environment and be responsible for incidents that its operation causes. Their product lead may own responsibility for the financial costs associated to the operation of their development environments. + Define who owns an organization, account, collection of resources, or individual components: Define and record ownership in an appropriately accessible location organized to support discovery. Update definitions and ownership details as they change. + Capture ownership in the metadata for the resources: Capture resource ownership using metadata such as tags or resource groups, specifying ownership and contact information. Use AWS Organizations to structure accounts and ensure ownership and contact information are captured. # OPS02-BP02 Processes and procedures have identified owners Understand who has ownership of the definition of individual processes and procedures, why those specific process and procedures are used, and why that ownership exists. Understanding the reasons that specific processes and procedures are used enables identification of improvement opportunities. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Understanding ownership identifies who can approve improvements, implement those improvements, or both. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High ## Implementation guidance + 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. + Identify process and procedures: Identify the operations activities conducted in support of your workloads. Document these activities in a discoverable location. + Define who owns the definition of a process or procedure: Uniquely identify the individual or team responsible for the specification of an activity. They are responsible to ensure it can be successfully performed by an adequately skilled team member with the correct permissions, access, and tools. If there are issues with performing that activity, the team members performing it are responsible to provide the detailed feedback necessary for the activitiy to be improved. + Capture ownership in the metadata of the activity artifact: Procedures automated in services like AWS Systems Manager, through documents, and AWS Lambda, as functions, support capturing metadata information as tags. Capture resource ownership using tags or resource groups, specifying ownership and contact information. Use AWS Organizations to create tagging polices and ensure ownership and contact information are captured. # OPS02-BP03 Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance Understand who has responsibility to perform specific activities on defined workloads and why that responsibility exists. Understanding who has responsibility to perform activities informs who will conduct the activity, validate the result, and provide feedback to the owner of the activity. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Understanding who is responsible to perform an activity informs whom to notify when action is needed and who will perform the action, validate the result, and provide feedback to the owner of the activity. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High ## Implementation guidance + Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance: Capture the responsibility for performing processes and procedures used in your environment + Identify process and procedures: Identify the operations activities conducted in support of your workloads. Document these activities in a discoverable location. + Define who is responsible to perform each activity: Identify the team responsible for an activity. Ensure they have the details of the activity, and the necessary skills and correct permissions, access, and tools to perform the activity. They must understand the condition under which it is to be performed (for example, on an event or schedule). Make this information discoverable so that members of your organization can identify who they need to contact, team or individual, for specific needs. # OPS02-BP04 Team members know what they are responsible for Understanding the responsibilities of your role and how you contribute to business outcomes informs the prioritization of your tasks and why your role is important. This enables team members to recognize needs and respond appropriately. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Understanding your responsibilities informs the decisions you make, the actions you take, and your hand off activities to their proper owners. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High ## Implementation guidance + Ensure 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. # OPS02-BP05 Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership Where no individual or team is identified, there are defined escalation paths to someone with the authority to assign ownership or plan for that need to be addressed. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Understanding who has responsbility or ownership allows you to reach out to the proper team or team member to make a request or transition a task. Having an identified person who has the authority to assign responsbility or ownership or plan to address needs reduces the risk of inaction and needs not being addressed. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High ## Implementation guidance + Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership: Provide accessible mechanisms for members of your organization to discover and identify ownership and responsibility. These mechanisms will enable them to identify who to contact, team or individual, for specific needs. # OPS02-BP06 Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions You are able to make requests to owners of processes, procedures, and resources. Make informed decisions to approve requests where viable and determined to be appropriate after an evaluation of benefits and risks. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** It’s critical that mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions in support of teams’ activities. Without this option, current state become a constraint on innovation. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Medium ## Implementation guidance + 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. # OPS02-BP07 Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated Have defined or negotiated agreements between teams describing how they work with and support each other (for example, response times, service level objectives, or service level agreements). Understanding the impact of the teams’ work on business outcomes, and the outcomes of other teams and organizations, informs the prioritization of their tasks and enables them to respond appropriately. When responsibility and ownership are undefined or unknown, you are at risk of both not addressing necessary activities in a timely fashion and of redundant and potentially conflicting efforts emerging to address those needs. **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Establishing the responsibilities between teams, the objectives, and the methods for communicating needs, eases the flow of requests and helps ensures the necessary information is provided. This reduces the delay introduced by transition tasks between teams and help support the achievement of business outcomes. **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Low ## Implementation guidance + 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.