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Larkinized LLC Skip to content

Larkinized LLC

Enterprise Architecture, Elevated

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Cloud & Platform

Cloud Adoption Readiness Assessment

Start immediately — no email required. Read the scoring guidance for each question — honest evidence-based scores produce actionable results. When you finish, print or save your scorecard, and optionally download the companion playbook.

Foundation & Landing Zone

A landing zone is your cloud "factory floor" — identity, network, policy, and guardrails before workloads arrive.

Rate each statement: 1 = not true · 3 = partially true · 5 = consistently true with evidence

Multi-account/subscription structure with guardrails is in production.

Score 1 if teams share a single account with admin keys; 5 if segmented with SCPs/policy-as-code.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Ad hoc accounts; inconsistent security baseline.
Score 5: 5 — Landing zone automated; guardrails enforced; account vending self-service.

1 2 3 4 5

Identity federation maps enterprise roles to cloud permissions (least privilege).

Standing admin access and long-lived keys are red flags.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Local cloud users and shared admin credentials.
Score 5: 5 — SSO/federation, RBAC, JIT elevation, and periodic access reviews.

1 2 3 4 5

Network topology (hub-spoke, DNS, egress) is documented and repeatable.

Undocumented VPC peering and manual DNS are common at score 2.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Network grows organically; outages during changes.
Score 5: 5 — Standard network patterns codified; changes via IaC with review.

1 2 3 4 5

Workload Fit & Migration

Readiness is choosing the right migration path — rehost, refactor, or retire — with evidence.

Rate each statement: 1 = not true · 3 = partially true · 5 = consistently true with evidence

Applications assessed with 6R (or equivalent) strategy and dependency mapping.

Lift-and-shift without assessment is a 1–2 regardless of cloud spend.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — No systematic assessment; "move everything" mindset.
Score 5: 5 — Portfolio assessed; strategies approved; dependencies and data flows mapped.

1 2 3 4 5

Non-functional requirements (RTO/RPO, latency, compliance) drive cloud design.

If DR and compliance are afterthoughts, score low.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — NFRs unknown or ignored until audit/incident.
Score 5: 5 — NFRs in intake; architecture patterns matched to tiering.

1 2 3 4 5

Exit strategy and vendor lock-in risks documented per major platform choice.

Managed services are fine — unmanaged proprietary coupling is a maturity gap.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — No consideration of portability or exit cost.
Score 5: 5 — Lock-in risks in ADRs; mitigations (APIs, data export) where strategic.

1 2 3 4 5

FinOps & Cost Governance

Cloud without cost visibility becomes a surprise invoice — FinOps is architecture for money.

Rate each statement: 1 = not true · 3 = partially true · 5 = consistently true with evidence

Cost allocation tags and chargeback/showback are enforced.

Untagged resources at scale indicate immaturity.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Cannot attribute cloud spend to products or teams.
Score 5: 5 — Mandatory tags; monthly showback; owners accountable for anomalies.

1 2 3 4 5

Budgets, alerts, and anomaly detection prevent runaway spend.

Post-mortems after invoice shock are a score of 2.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — No budgets or alerts.
Score 5: 5 — Budgets per team/env; automated alerts; rightsizing cadence.

1 2 3 4 5

Architecture choices consider unit economics (cost per transaction/user).

Design reviews should include cost estimate — not only performance.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Cost discovered after build.
Score 5: 5 — Cost models in design review; trade-offs documented in ADRs.

1 2 3 4 5

Cloud Operations

Running cloud is a product — SRE practices, automation, and security operations must scale with adoption.

Rate each statement: 1 = not true · 3 = partially true · 5 = consistently true with evidence

Infrastructure and policy defined as code with peer review.

Console-click production changes are incompatible with score 4–5.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Manual changes; configuration drift common.
Score 5: 5 — IaC for core infra; PR reviews; drift detection remediated.

1 2 3 4 5

Security operations (CSPM, logging, IR) cover cloud estate consistently.

Partial coverage on "important" accounts only is a 2–3.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — Cloud security is bolted on after incidents.
Score 5: 5 — Central logging, CSPM, IR playbooks tested; coverage metrics reported.

1 2 3 4 5

Platform team enables self-service with golden paths — not ticket-driven VM requests.

Maturity means product teams deploy safely without waiting on ops tickets.

What makes a 1 vs a 5?

Score 1: 1 — All cloud work is ticket queue to central ops.
Score 5: 5 — Self-service templates, docs, and SLO-backed platform with feedback loop.

1 2 3 4 5

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