# OPS 3 How does your organizational culture support your business outcomes?
Provide support for your team members so that they can be more effective in taking action and supporting your business outcome.
**Topics**
+ [OPS03-BP01 Executive Sponsorship](ops_org_culture_executive_sponsor.md)
+ [OPS03-BP02 Team members are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk](ops_org_culture_team_emp_take_action.md)
+ [OPS03-BP03 Escalation is encouraged](ops_org_culture_team_enc_escalation.md)
+ [OPS03-BP04 Communications are timely, clear, and actionable](ops_org_culture_effective_comms.md)
+ [OPS03-BP05 Experimentation is encouraged](ops_org_culture_team_enc_experiment.md)
+ [OPS03-BP06 Team members are enabled and encouraged to maintain and grow their skill sets](ops_org_culture_team_enc_learn.md)
+ [OPS03-BP07 Resource teams appropriately](ops_org_culture_team_res_appro.md)
+ [OPS03-BP08 Diverse opinions are encouraged and sought within and across teams](ops_org_culture_diverse_inc_access.md)
# OPS03-BP01 Executive Sponsorship
Senior leadership clearly sets expectations for the organization and evaluates success. Senior leadership is the sponsor, advocate, and driver for the adoption of best practices and evolution of the organization
**Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Engaged leadership, clearly communicated expectations, and shared goals ensures that team members know what is expected of them. Evaluating success enables identification of barriers to success so that they can be addressed through intervention by the sponsor advocate or their delegates.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High
## Implementation guidance
+ Executive Sponsorship: Senior leadership clearly sets expectations for the organization and evaluates success. Senior leadership is the sponsor, advocate, and driver for the adoption of best practices and evolution of the organization
+ Set expectations: Define and publish goals for your organizations including how they will be measured.
+ Track achievement of goals: Measure the incremental achievement of goals regularly and share the results so that appropriate action can be taken if outcomes are at risk.
+ Provide the resources necessary to achieve your goals: Regularly review if resources are still appropriate, of if additional resources are needed based on: new information, changes to goals, responsibilities, or your business environment.
+ Advocate for your teams: Remain engaged with your teams so that you understand how they are doing and if there are external factors affecting them. When your teams are impacted by external factors, reevaluate goals and adjust targets as appropriate. Identify obstacles that are impeding your teams progress. Act on behalf of your teams to help address obstacles and remove unnecessary burdens.
+ Be a driver for adoption of best practices: Acknowledge best practices that provide quantifiable benefits and recognize the creators and adopters. Encourage further adoption to magnify the benefits achieved.
+ Be a driver for evolution of for your teams: Create a culture of continual improvement. Encourage both personal and organizational growth and development. Provide long term targets to strive for that will require incremental achievement over time. Adjust this vision to compliment your needs, business goals, and business environment as they change.
# OPS03-BP02 Team members are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk
The workload owner has defined guidance and scope empowering team members to respond when outcomes are at risk. Escalation mechanisms are used to get direction when events are outside of the defined scope.
**Benefits of establishing this best practice:** By testing and validating changes early, you are able to address issues with minimized costs and limit the impact on your customers. By testing prior to deployment you minimize the introduction of errors.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High
## Implementation guidance
+ Team members are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk: Provide your team members the permissions, tools, and opportunity to practice the skills necessary to respond effectively.
+ Give your team members opportunity to practice the skills necessary to respond: Provide alternative safe environments where processes and procedures can be tested and trained upon safely. Perform game days to allow team members to gain experience responding to real world incidents in simulated and safe environments.
+ Define and acknowledge team members' authority to take action: Specifically define team members authority to take action by assigning permissions and access to the workloads and components they support. Acknowledge that they are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk.
# OPS03-BP03 Escalation is encouraged
Team members have mechanisms and are encouraged to escalate concerns to decision makers and stakeholders if they believe outcomes are at risk. Escalation should be performed early and often so that risks can be identified, and prevented from causing incidents.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High
## Implementation guidance
+ Encourage early and frequent escalation: Organizationally acknowledge that escalation early and often is the best practice. Organizationally acknowledge and accept that escalations may prove to be unfounded, and that it is better to have the opportunity to prevent an incident then to miss that opportunity by not escalating.
+ Have a mechanism for escalation: Have documented procedures defining when and how escalation should occur. Document the series of people with increasing authority to take action or approve action and their contact information. Escalation should continue until the team member is satisfied that they have handed off the risk to a person able to address it, or they have contacted the person who owns the risk and liability for the operation of the workload. It is that person who ultimately owns all decisions with respect to their workload. Escalations should include the nature of the risk, the criticality of the workload, who is impacted, what the impact is, and the urgency, that is, when is the impact expected.
+ Protect employees who escalate: Have policy that protects team members from retribution if they escalate around a non-responsive decision maker or stakeholder. Have mechanisms in place to identify if this is occurring and respond appropriately.
# OPS03-BP04 Communications are timely, clear, and actionable
Mechanisms exist and are used to provide timely notice to team members of known risks and planned events. Necessary context, details, and time (when possible) are provided to support determining if action is necessary, what action is required, and to take action in a timely manner. For example, providing notice of software vulnerabilities so that patching can be expedited, or providing notice of planned sales promotions so that a change freeze can be implemented to avoid the risk of service disruption.
Planned events can be recorded in a change calendar or maintenance schedule so that team members can identify what activities are pending.
On AWS, [AWS Systems Manager Change Calendar](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-change-calendar.html) can be used to record these details. It supports programmatic checks of calendar status to determine if the calendar is open or closed to activity at a particular point of time. Operations activities can be planned around specific *approved* windows of time that are reserved for potentially disruptive activities. AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows allows you to schedule activities against instances and other [supported resources](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ARG/latest/userguide/supported-resources.html#supported-resources-console) to automate the activities and make those activities discoverable.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** High
## Implementation guidance
+ Communications are timely, clear, and actionable: Mechanisms are in place to provide notification of risks or planned events in a clear and actionable way with enough notice to allow appropriate responses.
+ Document planned activities on a change calendar and provide notifications: Provide an accessible source of information where planned events can be discovered. Provide notifications of planned events from the same system.
+ Track events and activity that may have an impact on your workload: Monitoring vulnerability notifications and patch information to understand vulnerabilities in the wild and potential risks associated to your workload components. Provide notification to team members so that they can take action.
## Resources
**Related documents:**
+ [AWS Systems Manager Change Calendar](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-change-calendar.html)
+ [AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-maintenance.html)
# OPS03-BP05 Experimentation is encouraged
Experimentation accelerates learning and keeps team members interested and engaged. An undesired result is a successful experiment that has identified a path that will not lead to success. Team members are not punished for successful experiments with undesired results. Experimentation is required for innovation to happen and turn ideas into outcomes.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Medium
## Implementation guidance
+ Experimentation is encouraged: Encourage experimentation to support learning and innovation.
+ Experiment with a variety of technologies: Encourage experimentation with technologies that may have applicability now or in the future to the achievement of your business outcomes. This knowledge may inform future innovation.
+ Experiment with a goal in mind: Encourage experimentation with specific goals for team members to reach for, or with technologies that may have applicability in the near future. This knowledge may inform your innovation.
+ Provide structured time to experiment: Dedicate specific times when team members can be free of their normal responsibilities, so that they can focus on their experiments.
+ Provide the resources to support experimentation: Fund the resources required to conduct experiments (for example, software, or cloud resources).
+ Acknowledge success: Recognize the value yielded by experimentation. Understand that experiments with undesired outcomes are successful and have identified a path that will not lead to success. Team members are not punished for undesired outcomes from experiments.
# OPS03-BP06 Team members are enabled and encouraged to maintain and grow their skill sets
Teams must grow their skill sets to adopt new technologies, and to support changes in demand and responsibilities in support of your workloads. Growth of skills in new technologies is frequently a source of team member satisfaction and supports innovation. Support your team members’ pursuit and maintenance of industry certifications that validate and acknowledge their growing skills. Cross train to promote knowledge transfer and reduce the risk of significant impact when you lose skilled and experienced team members with institutional knowledge. Provide dedicated structured time for learning.
AWS provides resources, including the [AWS Getting Started Resource Center](https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/), [AWS Blogs](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/), [AWS Online Tech Talks](https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/), [AWS Events and Webinars](https://aws.amazon.com/events/), and the [AWS Well-Architected Labs](https://wellarchitectedlabs.com/), that provide guidance, examples, and detailed walkthroughs to educate your teams.
AWS also shares best practices and patterns that we have learned through the operation of AWS in [The Amazon Builders' Library](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/) and a wide variety of other useful educational material through the [AWS Blog](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/) and [The Official AWS Podcast](https://aws.amazon.com/podcasts/aws-podcast/).
You should take advantage of the education resources provided by AWS such as the Well-Architected labs, [AWS Support](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/programs/) ([AWS Knowledge Center](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/), [AWS Discussion Forms](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/index.jspa), and [AWS Support Center](https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home/)) and [AWS Documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-security-incident-response-guide/welcome.html) to educate your teams. Reach out to AWS Support through AWS Support Center for help with your AWS questions.
[AWS Training and Certification](https://aws.amazon.com/training/) provides some free training through self-paced digital courses on AWS fundamentals. You can also register for instructor-led training to further support the development of your teams’ AWS skills.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Medium
## Implementation guidance
+ Team members are enabled and encouraged to maintain and grow their skill sets: To adopt new technologies, support innovation, and to support changes in demand and responsibilities in support of your workloads continuing education is necessary.
+ Provide resources for education: Provided dedicated structured time, access to training materials, lab resources, and support participation in conferences and professional organizations that provide opportunities for learning from both educators and peers. Provide junior team members' access to senior team members as mentors or allow them to shadow their work and be exposed to their methods and skills. Encourage learning about content not directly related to work in order to have a broader perspective.
+ Team education and cross-team engagement: Plan for the continuing education needs of your team members. Provide opportunities for team members to join other teams (temporarily or permanently) to share skills and best practices benefiting your entire organization
+ Support pursuit and maintenance of industry certifications: Support your team members acquiring and maintaining industry certifications that validate what they have learned, and acknowledge their accomplishments.
## Resources
**Related documents:**
+ [AWS Getting Started Resource Center](https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/)
+ [AWS Blogs](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/)
+ [AWS Cloud Compliance](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/)
+ [AWS Discussion Forms](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/index.jspa)
+ [AWS Documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-security-incident-response-guide/welcome.html)
+ [AWS Online Tech Talks](https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/)
+ [AWS Events and Webinars](https://aws.amazon.com/events/)
+ [AWS Knowledge Center](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/)
+ [AWS Support](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/programs/)
+ [AWS Training and Certification](https://aws.amazon.com/training/)
+ [AWS Well-Architected Labs](https://wellarchitectedlabs.com/),
+ [The Amazon Builders' Library](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/)
+ [The Official AWS Podcast](https://aws.amazon.com/podcasts/aws-podcast/).
# OPS03-BP07 Resource teams appropriately
Maintain team member capacity, and provide tools and resources to support your workload needs. Overtasking team members increases the risk of incidents resulting from human error. Investments in tools and resources (for example, providing automation for frequently performed activities) can scale the effectiveness of your team, enabling them to support additional activities.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Medium
## Implementation guidance
+ Resource teams appropriately: Ensure you have an understanding of the success of your teams and the factors that contribute to their success or lack of success. Act to support teams with appropriate resources.
+ Understand team performance: Measure the achievement of operational outcomes and the development of assets by your teams. Track changes in output and error rate over time. Engage with teams to understand the work related challenges that impact them (for example, increasing responsibilities, changes in technology, loss of personnel, or increase in customers supported).
+ Understand impacts on team performance: Remain engaged with your teams so that you understand how they are doing and if there are external factors affecting them. When your teams are impacted by external factors, reevaluate goals and adjust targets as appropriate. Identify obstacles that are impeding your teams progress. Act on behalf of your teams to help address obstacles and remove unnecessary burdens.
+ Provide the resources necessary for teams to be successful: Regularly review if resources are still appropriate, of if additional resources are needed, and make appropriate adjustments to support teams.
# OPS03-BP08 Diverse opinions are encouraged and sought within and across teams
Leverage cross-organizational diversity to seek multiple unique perspectives. Use this perspective to increase innovation, challenge your assumptions, and reduce the risk of confirmation bias. Grow inclusion, diversity, and accessibility within your teams to gain beneficial perspectives.
Organizational culture has a direct impact on team member job satisfaction and retention. Enable the engagement and capabilities of your team members to enable the success of your business.
**Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Low
## Implementation guidance
+ Seek diverse opinions and perspectives: Encourage contributions from everyone. Give voice to under-represented groups. Rotate roles and responsibilities in meetings.
+ Expand roles and responsibilities: Provide opportunity for team members to take on roles that they might not otherwise. They will gain experience and perspective from the role, and from interactions with new team members with whom they might not otherwise interact. They will bring their experience and perspective to the new role and team members they interact with. As perspective increases, additional business opportunities may emerge, or new opportunities for improvement may be identified. Have members within a team take turns at common tasks that others typically perform to understand the demands and impact of performing them.
+ Provide a safe and welcoming environment: Have policy and controls that protect team members' mental and physical safety within your organization. Team members should be able to interact without fear of reprisal. When team members feel safe and welcome they are more likely to be engaged and productive. The more diverse your organization the better your understanding can be of the people you support including your customers. When your team members are comfortable, feel free to speak, and are confident they will be heard, they are more likely to share valuable insights (for example, marketing opportunities, accessibility needs, unserved market segments, unacknowledged risks in your environment).
+ Enable team members to participate fully: Provide the resources necessary for your employees to participate fully in all work related activities. Team members that face daily challenges have developed skills for working around them. These uniquely developed skills can provide significant benefit to your organization. Supporting team members with necessary accommodations will increase the benefits you can receive from their contributions.