[bradknowles]

So, one problem I’ve seen with most infrastructure as code solutions and CMDBs is that they do a good job at the tactical level (more or less), and help you answer “how”, “where”, “what”, and maybe “when” questions (depending on how well they support orchestration), they typically do a bad job at the higher level strategic “why” questions.

So, why do you structure your lambda jobs accessing CloudWatch Logs that way as opposed to the other way? If you didn’t know that one way works and the other doesn’t, you wouldn’t be able to understand that question. And that might have domino effects on other parts of your system.

I haven’t found a good solution to documenting the high level strategic “why” questions, other than to just write down the questions and the answer, with reasoning, in some form of associated documentation — maybe in a wiki or something. But, of course, the underlying issues may change in the near future and invalidate the reasons for your decision. And the high level documentation doesn’t have any way to be compiled directly into the lower level implementation, so of course there is always the risk of drift.

I’m still looking for good solutions in this space.