A Global Operational Readiness Review Process: Improving Cloud Availability

The ORR (Operational Readiness Review) is a long-standing practice to help insure application or system readiness and improved Availability. In this paper the ORR is defined and recent examples of its use from Cloud Computing environments are compared. An emphasis on ORRs used within DevOps environments is also provided. A detailed presentation of a custom ORR implementation for a large global IT organization is shared. This includes the process development approach, key components of the ORR checklist, automation support provided, and a unique Executive dashboard visualization of status on in-flight releases. Challenges and benefits from this ORR implementation are provided as well as a discussion of industry checklists and their associated Production Readiness Reviews (PRR)/ORR. Finally, suggestions for further improvements, automation, and usage of the ORR in large-scale industrial settings based on this real-world experience are elaborated.