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💼 OPS10-BP03 Prioritize operational events based on business impact

• ID: /frameworks/aws-well-architected/operational-excellence/operate/ops10/bp03

Description

Responding promptly to operational events is critical, but not all events are equal. When you prioritize based on business impact, you also prioritize addressing events with the potential for significant consequences, such as safety, financial loss, regulatory violations, or damage to reputation.

Desired outcome: Responses to operational events are prioritized based on potential impact to business operations and objectives. This makes the responses efficient and effective.

Common anti-patterns

• Every event is treated with the same level of urgency, leading to confusion and delays in addressing critical issues.
• You fail to distinguish between high and low impact events, leading to misallocation of resources.
• Your organization lacks a clear prioritization framework, resulting in inconsistent responses to operational events.
• Events are prioritized based on the order they are reported, rather than their impact on business outcomes.

Benefits of establishing this best practice

• Ensures critical business functions receive attention first, minimizing potential damage.
• Improves resource allocation during multiple concurrent events.
• Enhances the organization's ability to maintain trust and meet regulatory requirements.

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

Implementation guidance

When faced with multiple operational events, a structured approach to prioritization based on impact and urgency is essential. This approach helps you make informed decisions, direct efforts where they're needed most, and mitigate the risk to business continuity.

Implementation steps

1. Assess impact: Develop a classification system to evaluate the severity of events in terms of their potential impact on business operations and objectives.

2. Assess urgency: Define urgency levels for how quickly an event needs a response, considering factors such as safety, financial implications, and service-level agreements (SLAs).

3. Create a prioritization matrix:

   • Use a matrix to cross-reference impact and urgency, assigning priority levels to different combinations.
   • Make the matrix accessible and understood by all team members responsible for operational event responses.
   4. Train and communicate: Train response teams on the prioritization matrix and the importance of following it during an event. Communicate the prioritization process to all stakeholders to set clear expectations.

4. Integrate with incident response:

   • Incorporate the prioritization matrix into your incident response plans and tools.
   • Automate the classification and prioritization of events where possible to speed up response times.
   • Enterprise Support customers can leverage AWS Incident Detection and Response, which provides 24x7 proactive monitoring and incident management for production workloads.

5. Review and adapt: Regularly review the effectiveness of the prioritization process and make adjustments based on feedback and changes in the business environment.

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