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 specific and 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 solution to visualize status on in-flight releases. Challenges and benefits from this ORR implementation are provided as well as a detailed comparison with the Google Launch checklist and its associated 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. Keywords: Operational Readiness Review, ORR, IT Services, IT Operations, ITIL, Process Engineering, Reliability, Availability, Software Architecture, Cloud Computing, Networking, Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, Agile Methods, Quality, Defect Prevention, Release Management, Risk Management, Data Visualization, Organizational Change Management.