If you’ve ever partnered with AWS when building an application you know that you go through an Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) plan in the weeks leading up to your go-live event. Part of the IEM is walking through all aspects of your application with key personnel from your company to determine if you’re ready for launch operationally.
The first time I was in one of these meetings, things seemed to go really well… until they didn’t. We were deep in an Operational Readiness Review and questions started popping up about success measures.
At the time I was the development manager and running point on the project. Our AWS account manager asked me a simple question, “what metrics are you tracking that measure your success?” to which I simply gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look. I had no idea. We never had discussions about what success looked like.