Challenge Info

30 min · 25 pts · architect · 02-architecture-assessment.md, 03-des-architecture-diagram.md

Challenge 2: Architecture Assessment¶

The Architecture Challenge¶

You have requirements — now translate them into an Azure architecture that's reliable, secure, cost-effective, and Well-Architected.

Your constraints:

~€500/month budget for infrastructure
Small ops team (managed services preferred)
EU data residency (GDPR)
99.9% SLA target
3-month timeline to MVP

Your Challenge¶

Use the architect agent to evaluate your requirements against Azure's Well-Architected Framework and produce a comprehensive architecture assessment.

Prompt Engineering Focus:

How do you reference previous agent work?
What architectural decisions should YOU make vs asking the agent?
How do you balance cost, reliability, and complexity?

Guiding Questions:

Service Selection:

Web hosting: App Service vs Container Apps vs AKS?
Database: SQL Database vs Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL?
Storage: Blob Storage tiers — Hot, Cool, Archive?
What factors drive each decision?
Which options align with team skills and timeline?

Well-Architected Pillars:

Reliability: How do you achieve 99.9%? What's your failure strategy?
Security: How do you handle secrets? What network boundaries exist?
Cost: Where can you optimize without sacrificing requirements?
Performance: Where will bottlenecks occur? How do you mitigate?
Operational Excellence: How complex can your team handle?

Cost vs Capability Trade-offs:

Zone redundancy: Do you need it for MVP?
Backup retention: 7 days vs 30 days?
Premium tiers: When is Standard sufficient?
Managed services premium: Worth the cost reduction in ops burden?

Compliance Alignment:

GDPR: Which services support EU data residency?
Azure Policy: What governance should be enforced?
Data classification: What data is most sensitive?

Crafting Your Prompt¶

Example approach (adapt based on your requirements):

Review my requirements in [file path] and assess the architecture against
Azure Well-Architected Framework.

Key decisions I need guidance on:
[What are you uncertain about? Where do trade-offs exist?]

Business constraints to consider:
[Budget, timeline, team, compliance]

Please provide recommendations for [specific areas].

Architectural Thinking:

Start with constraints (budget, compliance, timeline)
Consider team capabilities — can they operate it?
Identify critical paths — what can't fail?
Think iteratively — what's MVP vs future enhancement?

Expected Conversation Flow¶

The architect agent will:

Review your requirements document
Identify gaps or ambiguities
Propose service options with trade-offs
Assess against Well-Architected pillars
Recommend specific SKUs and configurations

Your role:

Make business-aligned decisions
Ask "why" when recommendations seem over-engineered
Challenge cost vs value
Validate against requirements

Verification¶

Your architecture assessment should capture:

✅ Workload overview (business context, requirements summary)
✅ Recommended Azure services with SKUs
✅ Well-Architected Framework assessment (5 pillars)
✅ Trade-off analysis (cost, complexity, capability)
✅ Risk identification and mitigation strategies
✅ Specific recommendations for improvement
✅ Cost estimate or reference to pricing considerations
✅ Architecture diagram generated (PNG or Mermaid)

Success Criteria¶

Criterion	Points
Architecture assessment document created	5
Azure services selected with justification	5
WAF assessment complete (all 5 pillars)	5
Trade-offs documented	3
Cost estimate provided	4
Architecture diagram generated	3
Total	25

Coaching Tips¶

💡 Challenge recommendations — If something seems over-engineered, ask "Why do we need this?"

💡 Cost vs value — Premium tiers cost more. What business value do they provide?

💡 Managed services — With a small team, operational burden matters as much as cost

💡 MVP mindset — What's essential for launch vs nice-to-have later?

💡 Compliance first — GDPR violations are expensive. Data residency is non-negotiable.

Artifact Handoff¶

Item	Value
Input from	`agent-output/freshconnect/01-requirements.md` (Challenge 1)
Your output	`agent-output/freshconnect/02-architecture-assessment.md`, `agent-output/freshconnect/03-des-architecture-diagram.md`
Next step	Challenge 3: Bicep Implementation — the `bicep-plan` agent reads your architecture assessment

Reflection Questions¶

After completing this challenge:

Did the architect agent suggest services you hadn't considered?
How did you balance cost optimization with reliability requirements?
What architectural decisions were hardest to make? Why?
Did you prioritize business constraints or technical preferences?

📊 Reliability Checklist

[ ] SLA target defined and achievable
[ ] RTO/RPO documented
[ ] Backup strategy defined
[ ] Failure modes identified
[ ] Health monitoring configured

🔒 Security Checklist

[ ] Authentication method defined
[ ] TLS 1.2 minimum
[ ] Secrets in Key Vault
[ ] Network security considered
[ ] Managed identities preferred

💰 Cost Checklist

[ ] Within budget
[ ] Right-sized SKUs
[ ] Consumption vs. provisioned evaluated
[ ] Dev/Test vs. Production considered

Tips¶

💡 The architect agent will suggest trade-offs — understand them
💡 Cost estimates are approximate — actual costs may vary
💡 Don't gold-plate the MVP — focus on essential features
💡 Document assumptions and constraints

Note

Final scoring uses the criteria in the scoring rubric, which is the single source of truth for all point values. Scoring rubric available from your facilitator.

Required: Architecture Diagram ⭐ MANDATORY¶

Before proceeding to Challenge 3, generate an architecture diagram:

Use the `design` agent (with the `azure-diagrams` skill) to create an architecture diagram for FreshConnect based on
agent-output/freshconnect/02-architecture-assessment.md

Your diagram should visualize:

Azure services and their relationships
Data flows between components
Network boundaries and security zones
Regional placement of resources

Save your diagram — you'll need it for your Partner Showcase in Challenge 8.