Conducting the assessment meeting - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Choosing attendeesFacilitating the meeting

Conducting the assessment meeting

We recommend that you include all parties who will be involved in the migration effort in the assessment meeting. One of the primary outcomes of this activity is alignment on the current state of capabilities, and this consensus is best built through dialog with all interested parties.

Scheduling a meeting with a large number of attendees can take some coordination, so be sure to start planning and coordinating attendance two to three weeks before the meeting.

An experienced facilitator can conduct an MRA meeting in 4-6 hours. The ideal scenario is to have everyone in the same room to ensure maximum participation and to enable consensus building. Be sure to arrange comfortable seating with tables, and provide meals and breaks as needed.

Lastly, consider the timing of when particular individuals will be in the room. For example, if the CIO and head of IT Finance can’t attend the entire meeting, plan topics accordingly. Strategy, business case, and budgeting are often the first topics to discuss, followed by account structure and tagging questions for bill-back or show-back considerations.

Choosing attendees

Keeping the intent of consensus in mind, we recommend that you invite people who can provide both horizontal and vertical representation across the organization. Suggested attendees:

  • CEO

  • CTO / chief architect

  • CIO

  • Managing director

  • Business unit owners

  • IT finance

  • Security leader

  • Network leader

  • Application development leader

  • Infrastructure leader

  • Operations leader

  • Application owners (first few)

Facilitating the meeting

The meeting should begin with general introductions, to make sure that everyone is aware of who is representing which part of the organization, and to confirm that the proper people are in the room. After introductions, the CIO or their delegate can provide an overview of the cloud strategy and motivation behind the planned migration. This will be followed by detailed MRA discussions for alignment and buy-in.

Example agenda:

MRA Agenda
9:30 Introductions
9:45 Review business and technology goals and objectives Review goals for migrating applications to AWS. Discuss short-term and long-term objectives, risks, and issues related to IT and business application migrations.
10:00 (with breaks every hour) Assess migration readiness

Review current AWS footprint, applications, operational processes, and integration.

Focus your discussions on the following topics:

  • Total cost of ownership

  • Business

  • Governance

  • People

  • Platform

  • Operations

  • Security
15:00 Summarize feedback and actions
15:30 Adjourn
Note

AWS uses a list of around 70 questions that align to the AWS CAF and engage participants through the various areas under evaluation. These questions cover around 24 areas of readiness, and each area is assessed with 2-3 questions.

You can request an MRA facilitation or the list of questions from your AWS Account Manager. To see the questions or to do a self-assessment with a smaller subset of questions, see the AWS Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool (CART).