Begin with the workload and its owners
Write down the business process, the people who depend on it and the consequence of an interruption or incorrect result. Identify who owns the application, subscription, identity tenant, data and operating budget. Record known dependencies on external APIs and on-premises or other cloud systems.
Collect a current diagram, a resource inventory and the relevant deployment history. Ask for redacted configuration and scoped read access when needed. A diagram is a starting hypothesis until it is checked against the deployed environment. Record gaps instead of assuming that a control exists.
Questions, evidence and decisions
| Review area and question | Evidence to inspect | Decision to record |
|---|---|---|
| Identity: who or what can administer the workload and read its data? | Role assignments, workload identities, credential handling and access review records. | Required privileges, access owners, temporary access and credential removal where feasible. |
| Network: which paths must be public, private or connected to external services? | DNS resolution, routes, ingress controls, egress dependencies and connection tests. | Allowed paths, minimum necessary rules and a rollback plan that preserves required integrations. |
| Application and data resilience: what happens when a dependency fails? | Timeouts, retries, queue behavior, backup settings and an observed restore exercise. | Recovery objectives agreed by the business, failure handling and evidence needed before release. |
| Cost: which resources and usage patterns drive the bill? | Billing exports, resource ownership, utilization trends, data transfer and license assumptions. | Measured baseline, candidate changes, tradeoffs and a way to verify actual impact. |
| Operations: can the team detect a problem and reverse a deployment? | Useful logs and alerts, deployment history, runbooks and tested rollback procedures. | Alert owners, release checks, retention needs and operational handover. |
| AI and API integration: what information and actions can the system access? | Data sources, tool permissions, input/output evaluation, audit events and model/API costs. | Approved data boundary, human approval for consequential actions, fallback behavior and acceptance tests. |
Turn findings into a controlled plan
For every finding, record the observed condition, supporting evidence, business consequence and proposed action. Add an owner, dependencies and a verification method. A hypothesis such as “this database tier appears oversized” should stay a hypothesis until representative measurements support a change.
Prioritize findings by impact and confidence, then consider implementation effort and rollback complexity. Agree on acceptable change windows. Capture a baseline and prepare reversal before changing network access, identities or runtime configuration. Review results after deployment against the original requirement, including the full user journey and downstream integrations.
Use the right Microsoft guidance
The Cloud Adoption Framework landing-zone guidance helps frame platform organization and governance. The Azure Well-Architected Framework supports workload design reviews. Cost Optimization principles help evaluate financial tradeoffs, while responsible AI guidance informs the review of AI behavior and data handling. Adapt the guidance to the workload instead of treating every feature as a requirement.
Need help interpreting the findings?
Athena Solutions can help review the evidence, investigate a specific Azure issue or scope implementation of the agreed priorities. Bring your goals, constraints and sanitized architecture context. A written proposal defines the deliverables, responsibilities and commercial terms for any engagement.