AWS Well-Architected Framework

Six pillars for building great cloud workloads.

2 sessions at the summit3 external resources

Overview

The AWS Well-Architected Framework codifies architecture best practices across six pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability. The Well-Architected Tool runs free reviews against your accounts; lenses extend the framework with domain-specific guidance (Generative AI Lens, SaaS, Serverless, IoT, Machine Learning, Financial Services, Games). Use it to identify high-risk issues and track remediation over time.

Key concepts

  1. Six pillars and their design principles
  2. Lenses for domain-specific guidance
  3. Risk identification: high (HRI) and medium (MRI)
  4. Trade-off analysis between pillars
  5. Continuous improvement with periodic reviews

Key AWS services

  • AWS Well-Architected Tool
  • AWS Trusted Advisor

Learn more — curated resources

Hand-picked official docs, foundational papers, and the best community guides for going deeper on this topic.

Sessions on this topic

2 sessions from the Summit covered this topic. Each is a self-contained mini-lesson.

  1. FSI206Intermediate

    Agentic AI Transforming Quality at Cloud Speed

    Agentic AI Transforming Quality at Cloud SpeedFinancial services cloud transformations unlock tremendous opportunity - and quality assurance is the catalyst. The Quality Validation Agent Framework deploys specialised AI agents across the delivery lifecycle, collaborating through the AgentCore Runtime Platform to continuously monitor, validate, and accelerate work in real-time. Covering Assessment, Transformation, Testing, and Deployment Intelligence, these autonomous agents shift FSI organisations from reactive checkpoints to proactive validation - eliminating rework, detecting defects early, and achieving AWS Well-Architected compliance with confidence. Come and join us to discover how agentic AI turns quality assurance into your fastest path to production in banking and financial services!

  2. FSI204Intermediate

    Agentic AI in Financial Services: Architectural Patterns That Work

    Getting agentic AI right in financial services means balancing innovation with the realities of compliance, risk, and auditability. This session cuts through the hype — exploring proven architectural patterns from reactive agents to multi-agent topologies, and how FSI organisations are using them to transform customer experience and automate operations. Leave with actionable guidance on building the business case, avoiding enterprise-scale pitfalls, and putting well-architected agents into production.

Non-obvious insights

From the Playbook

One sharp, contrarian insight per session — the things teams don't think of unprompted.

Most QA ROI claims focus on speed. The real win in FSI is *evidence*. Auditable decision logs from agents are paradoxically easier to produce than from humans. That's a regulatory advantage, not just a velocity one. ---FSI206 — Agentic AI Transforming Quality at Cloud Speed
The architectural pattern most FSI organisations underuse is the *human-in-the-loop circuit breaker* — an explicit point where the agent stops and waits for approval, not just review. That's the auditable artefact regulators care about. Review-after-the-fact looks the same on paper but isn't. ---FSI204 — Agentic AI in Financial Services: Architectural Patt…