AWS Well-Architected Framework Implementation Training Course

Course overview

AWS workloads often grow faster than their governance, documentation and operational controls. Teams inherit accounts with inconsistent tagging, unclear ownership, over-permissioned IAM roles, untested recovery procedures and cost reports that explain spend only after it has occurred. This course gives cloud professionals a repeatable way to examine an AWS workload, identify architectural risk and prioritise improvements using the AWS Well-Architected Framework rather than relying on informal design reviews or isolated service checks.

Participants work through all six Well-Architected pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimisation and Sustainability. They learn to scope a workload, gather architecture evidence, use the AWS Well-Architected Tool, interpret high-risk issues and improvement plan items, and connect pillar findings to services such as IAM, CloudTrail, AWS Config, CloudWatch, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, AWS Backup and Trusted Advisor. The course also addresses trade-offs between pillars, review facilitation and how to turn findings into accountable remediation work.

Teaching combines instructor-led architecture walkthroughs, guided AWS console exercises, scenario-based reviews and group discussion of realistic workload constraints. Participants complete a structured Well-Architected review of a reference workload and leave with a completed review record, prioritised risk register, remediation backlog and a practical plan for introducing recurring reviews into their own delivery or governance process. A certificate of completion is issued at the end of the five-day course.

The course suits technical staff who design, operate, secure or assure AWS workloads, as well as managers who need a defensible method for improving cloud resilience, security posture and cost control.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply the AWS Well-Architected Framework to scope and assess a defined AWS workload
• Conduct a six-pillar Well-Architected review using the AWS Well-Architected Tool
• Identify high-risk issues and improvement plan items from Well-Architected review results
• Map Security pillar findings to IAM, CloudTrail, AWS Config and encryption controls
• Evaluate Reliability pillar practices for failure recovery, backups, monitoring and disaster response
• Analyse Performance Efficiency and Cost Optimisation trade-offs using workload demand and utilisation evidence
• Create a prioritised remediation backlog with owners, effort estimates, dependencies and target dates
• Facilitate a repeatable Well-Architected review process and present an architecture improvement roadmap

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Cloud Architects — who design AWS solutions and need a consistent architecture assurance method
• Solutions Architects — who must identify workload risks and justify design recommendations to stakeholders
• DevOps Engineers — who operate AWS platforms and need to convert operational findings into improvement work
• Cloud Security Engineers — who assess identity, logging, detection and data-protection controls in AWS
• Site Reliability Engineers — who need to improve observability, resilience testing and recovery readiness
• IT Managers and Cloud Governance Leads — who need evidence-based cloud risk priorities and review governance

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand core AWS concepts, including accounts, Regions, IAM users and roles, VPCs, EC2, S3, CloudWatch and the shared responsibility model. Experience navigating the AWS Management Console and reading a basic AWS architecture diagram is expected. Participants should also be comfortable discussing availability, security controls, operational monitoring and cloud costs. Prior use of the AWS Well-Architected Tool is not required. This is suitable for professionals new to formal architecture reviews, but it is not an AWS fundamentals course; complete beginners should first gain hands-on familiarity with core AWS services.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led sessions to establish each Well-Architected pillar, followed by guided analysis of a realistic AWS workload in the AWS Management Console and AWS Well-Architected Tool. Participants inspect architecture diagrams, operational evidence and selected service configurations, then work in groups to challenge assumptions, record risks and agree practical improvements. Daily exercises build toward a complete review record. The final day includes a facilitated presentation of each team’s findings and an application-planning workshop for adapting the review process to participants’ own AWS estates.

Course outline

Day 1: Framework foundations and review setup

• AWS Well-Architected Framework purpose, structure and six pillars
• Workload definition, review scope and architecture evidence gathering
• Stakeholder roles for workload owners, builders, operators and reviewers
• AWS Well-Architected Tool dashboard, lenses and review workflow
• Question-based assessment and interpretation of high-risk issues
• Improvement plan items, milestones and review lifecycle management
• Architecture diagrams and workload inventory techniques for review readiness

Workshop: Participants scope a reference workload, create a review in the AWS Well-Architected Tool and produce an evidence checklist for the assessment.

Day 2: Operational Excellence and Security

• Operational Excellence design principles and operations-as-code practices
• CloudWatch metrics, logs, alarms and operational dashboards
• CloudTrail event history and audit trail design
• Runbooks, playbooks, incident response and post-incident learning
• Security pillar design principles and defence-in-depth controls
• IAM least privilege, role design, access reviews and federation
• AWS Config compliance rules, encryption controls and security monitoring

Workshop: Participants assess operational and security evidence for the reference workload and produce a ranked set of high-risk issues with proposed control improvements.

Day 3: Reliability and recovery design

• Reliability pillar principles, failure domains and workload dependencies
• Multi-AZ, Multi-Region and multi-account resilience patterns
• Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling and health-check design
• Backup strategy, restore validation and AWS Backup planning
• Recovery point objective and recovery time objective definition
• Fault isolation, graceful degradation and dependency failure handling
• Reliability testing, game days and disaster recovery runbooks

Workshop: Participants model failure scenarios for the reference workload and produce a resilience improvement plan with RTO, RPO and recovery test actions.

Day 4: Performance, cost and sustainability decisions

• Performance Efficiency principles and demand-driven architecture choices
• Compute selection across EC2, containers, Lambda and managed services
• Performance testing, load profiles and CloudWatch utilisation analysis
• Cost Optimisation principles, cost allocation tags and ownership models
• AWS Trusted Advisor recommendations and rightsizing analysis
• Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, storage lifecycle policies and budget controls
• Sustainability pillar practices for utilisation, managed services and resource lifecycle

Workshop: Participants analyse utilisation and spend data for the reference workload and produce a cost, performance and sustainability recommendation set with trade-offs.

Day 5: Review synthesis and implementation planning

• Cross-pillar trade-offs and risk-based architecture decisions
• Consolidating high-risk issues into a single remediation register
• Prioritisation methods using risk, customer impact, effort and dependency
• Writing actionable improvement plan items and acceptance criteria
• Assigning remediation owners, milestones and governance checkpoints
• Communicating Well-Architected findings to technical and executive audiences
• Establishing recurring reviews for new releases, major changes and production workloads

Workshop: Participants complete and present a Well-Architected review pack containing the review record, prioritised remediation backlog and 90-day implementation roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

AWS Well-Architected Tool, AWS Management Console, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions