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Beyond the Scorecard: Turning a Well-Architected Review into a Funded Roadmap

Make execs read it, trust it, and approve it.

Upendra Kumar
October 28, 2025
7–9 min read
Well-Architected Cost Security Reliability Operating Model

Positioning

A WAR is not an "audit." It's a risk-and-waste removal plan with a prioritized delivery roadmap.

Method

Step 1: Triage by severity + impact/effort

Step 2: Convert findings into decisions

Capture "why" using ADRs so future teams understand trade-offs and constraints.

Step 3: Make it fundable

Each item must include:

Diagram (Azure icons)

WAR pipeline from signals to prioritized roadmap and guardrails

Well-Architected Framework: The Five Pillars

The Well-Architected Framework provides a structured approach to evaluating your architecture across five critical pillars. Understanding these pillars is essential for conducting effective reviews and creating actionable roadmaps.

The Five Pillars

Azure Well-Architected Framework 5 Pillars

1. 🛡️ Reliability

Focus: Resiliency, availability, and recovery capabilities

Key Concerns:

Common Findings: Single points of failure, inadequate backup strategies, untested DR plans

2. 🔒 Security

Focus: Data protection, threat detection, and mitigation

Key Concerns:

Common Findings: Exposed secrets, overly permissive access, missing encryption, no threat monitoring

3. 💰 Cost Optimization

Focus: Cost modeling, budgets, and waste reduction

Key Concerns:

Common Findings: Oversized VMs, orphaned resources, no tagging strategy, missing budget alerts

4. ⚙️ Operational Excellence

Focus: Holistic observability and DevOps practices

Key Concerns:

Common Findings: Manual deployments, inadequate monitoring, no runbooks, configuration drift

5. ⚡ Performance Efficiency

Focus: Scalability and load testing

Key Concerns:

Common Findings: No auto-scaling, untested performance, missing caching, inefficient queries

Understanding Pillar Tradeoffs

Every architectural decision involves tradeoffs. The key is making informed choices aligned with business priorities:

Decision Reliability Security Cost Performance
Multi-region deployment ✅ High availability ✅ Geographic redundancy ❌ 2x infrastructure cost ✅ Lower latency
Azure Firewall Premium ➡️ Neutral ✅ Advanced threat protection ❌ Higher monthly cost ⚠️ Slight latency increase
Reserved Instances (3-year) ➡️ Neutral ➡️ Neutral ✅ 30-70% savings ➡️ Neutral
Aggressive auto-scaling ✅ Better resilience ➡️ Neutral ❌ Higher variable costs ✅ Handles traffic spikes

Conducting the Well-Architected Review

A structured review process ensures comprehensive coverage and actionable outcomes.

Continuous Improvement Cycle

Well-Architected continuous improvement cycle

When to Conduct Reviews

Greenfield Workloads (New Deployments)

Brownfield Workloads (Existing Environments)

Assessment Workflow

Well-Architected Review process workflow

Step 1: Take the Assessment

Step 2: Receive and Integrate Recommendations

Step 3: Prioritize and Implement

Step 4: Monitor Improvements

Tools and Automation

Leverage Microsoft's comprehensive tools to streamline your Well-Architected Review process.

Azure Review Checklists

The Azure Review Checklists repository provides structured validation:

Available Formats

  1. Excel Spreadsheets: Offline review and team collaboration
    • Landing Zone Review checklist
    • Security Baseline checklist
    • Networking Configuration checklist
    • Cost Optimization checklist
  2. Azure Resource Graph Queries: Automated compliance checking
    • Query your environment programmatically
    • Identify configuration gaps automatically
    • Generate compliance reports

Example: Automated NSG Validation

// Azure Resource Graph query to check NSG rules
Resources
| where type == "microsoft.network/networksecuritygroups"
| extend rules = properties.securityRules
| mv-expand rules
| where rules.properties.access == "Allow" 
    and rules.properties.direction == "Inbound"
    and rules.properties.sourceAddressPrefix == "*"
| project name, location, ruleName = rules.name, 
    priority = rules.properties.priority
| order by priority asc

Well-Architected Tools

The Well-Architected Tools repository provides automation scripts for:

Azure Advisor Integration

Azure Advisor uses the Well-Architected Framework pillars to analyze your resource configuration:

Making Recommendations Fundable

Transform technical findings into business-aligned proposals that executives will approve.

The Fundable Recommendation Template

Each recommendation should include:

1. Business Risk Statement

Bad: "No backup for production database"

Good: "Production database has no backup. Data loss would result in 48-72 hours downtime and estimated $500K revenue impact based on Q3 sales data."

2. A/B Options with Cost Deltas

3. 30/60/90 Day Plan

Best Practices for Executive Presentations

References

Microsoft Learn

GitHub

YouTube (Microsoft)

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