Enterprise Architecture principles
8. Design for operation
- Last reviewed
- 8 June 2026
- Owner
- Head of Architecture
Architect systems and services with operational efficiency, reliability and sustainability in mind.
Rationale
Smooth service operations reduce downtime, enhance reliability and availability.
Designing for efficient operations, with appropriate availability and scalability without manual intervention, drives reduced TCO.
The majority of costs for any service occur post-delivery - avoid short-term decisions to minimise delivery costs, or accelerate delivery timescales that adversely impact the organisation or users long-term.
Implications
Design systems with appropriate resilience and scalability to meet service needs, and those of any dependent services. Where possible, automate these to avoid service impacts in the event of sudden demand or failures.
Services may need different levels of availability and scalability for each module or component. Overall service availability and scalability is only as good as its weakest link. Plan and test for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity scenarios, as well as peak loads, to ensure service designs are appropriate.
Automation and integration of service operations to a common Configuration Management Database (CMDB), logging and monitoring platforms promotes easier maintenance, proactive monitoring and better support, with reduced resource requirements.
All projects delivering services that replace existing services or components must include decommissioning of the old service(s) or component(s) in the project activity and costs, to actively reduce technical debt.
Automate delivery pipelines to update CMDB / Service Catalogue, to ensure information is always up to date during delivery phases.
Evaluate the long-term viability of suppliers and products, to prevent technical debt or risk of supplier failure.
Architecture decisions need to factor the expected lifecycle of the service and its impact on stakeholders, the environment and TCO.
Decisions need to prioritise prevention of technical debt, minimise rework, ensure future scalability (up and down) and optimise operational resource and cost demands.
Include full-lifecycle people and technical resource costs in TCO comparisons when evaluating options.