Best Practices Library

A curated collection of frameworks, methodologies, and principles for modern software engineering and migration.

Amazon Web Services2015-11-30

A set of cloud design principles and check-lists for building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient workloads on AWS.

cloud-architectureresiliencecost-optimization
Microsoft2018-03-15

Microsoft’s five-pillar guidance (reliability, security, cost, performance, ops) for designing and operating workloads on Azure.

cloud-architectureperformance-efficiencygovernance
Google Cloud2020-07-21

Prescriptive guidance covering reliability, cost, performance, security, and operational excellence for GCP workloads.

cloud-architecturegcpdesign-principles
Cloud Native Computing Foundation2018-06-04

The CNCF’s formal definition of cloud-native computing and core principles for micro-services, containers, and dynamic orchestration.

cloud-nativemicroservicescontainers
Heroku (Salesforce)2015-01-01

Twelve practical guidelines for building modern, portable, cloud-ready web applications.

application-architecturestatelessdevops
Google2016-03-23

Codified principles (error budgets, toil elimination, SLIs/SLOs) for operating large-scale services reliably.

srereliability-engineeringservice-level-objectives
DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA)2018-09-15

Research-backed metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate) for high-performing software teams.

devopsperformance-metricssoftware-delivery
DevOps Enterprise Summit (Gene Kim et al.)2015-02-10

Framework emphasising Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing as pillars of DevOps success.

devopsculturecontinuous-improvement
OpenGitOps (CNCF WG)2021-06-09

Declarative, verifiable and automated operations — using Git as the single source of truth for infra and apps.

gitopscontinuous-deliverykubernetes
ThoughtWorks2015-05-01

Incrementally replacing legacy systems by routing new functionality to a new service while ‘strangling’ the old.

modernizationlegacy-migrationincremental-refactor
Continuous Delivery Community2016-08-20

Operating two identical production environments to achieve zero-downtime releases and quick rollbacks.

deployment-strategyzero-downtimerollback
Spinnaker Community2017-04-05

Progressively rolling out new software to a small subset of users to minimise risk before full release.

deployment-strategyprogressive-deliveryrisk-mitigation
OWASP Foundation2023-09-24

The ten most critical web application security risks; updated community consensus.

application-securitysecure-codingrisk-management
NIST2022-02-04

Guidelines for secure software development practices across the SDLC (SP 800-218).

secure-sdlcfederal-guidancesoftware-security
OpenSSF2021-06-17

End-to-end integrity guarantees for software supply-chain; defines levels 1-4.

supply-chain-securitysbomdevsecops
OWASP Foundation2017-09-01

Lightweight Bill-of-Materials standard for software components, vulnerabilities, and licenses.

sbomsoftware-compositionsecurity
HashiCorp & Bridgecrew2020-10-11

Best practices for securing Terraform, CloudFormation, and ARM templates in CI/CD pipelines.

infrastructure-as-codesecuritydevsecops
Kubernetes SIG Auth2021-11-16

Baseline, restricted, and privileged policy levels for securing pod workloads.

kubernetes-securitypolicycontainers
CNCF Security TAG2020-11-18

Guidance on building, shipping, and running secure cloud-native applications.

cloud-nativesecuritycontainers
OpenTelemetry Project2022-06-08

Best practices for generating consistent traces, metrics, and logs using OpenTelemetry.

observabilitytracingmetrics
Google SRE & Brendan Gregg2018-05-01

Standard approaches for selecting golden signals (Rate-Errors-Duration / Utilisation-Saturation-Errors).

monitoringobservabilitymetrics
Google Chrome Team2020-05-05

Core performance metrics (LCP, FID, CLS, INP) for measuring real-world user experience.

web-performanceuser-experiencefrontend
Susan Fowler2017-07-12

A checklist covering operability, reliability, deployability, and observability of micro-services.

microservicesoperabilityarchitecture
ThoughtWorks (Zhamak Dehghani)2020-05-27

Domain-oriented, self-serve data infrastructure principles promoting product thinking for data.

data-architecturedistributed-ownershipanalytics
dbt Labs2021-02-10

Community conventions for naming, structuring, and documenting dbt transformation projects.

analytics-engineeringsql-modellingdataops
Google2022-04-19

Opinionated REST and gRPC design rules: resource-oriented URIs, plural nouns, pagination, errors.

api-designrestgrpc
Microsoft2021-06-30

Cross-company REST consistency rules (nouns, verbs, versioning, errors).

api-designrestversioning
Stripe2019-11-14

Backwards-compatible evolution strategy and pinned versions for API consumers.

api-versioningproduct-managementsaas
SemVer.Org2017-06-20

Consistent MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning rules for APIs and packages.

versioningpackage-managementrelease-management
Conventional Commits Initiative2019-02-16

Machine-readable Git commit messages enabling automated changelogs and semantic releases.

gitrelease-automationsemver
Paul Hammant2017-01-10

Branching strategy promoting short-lived branches, frequent commits to trunk, and feature flags.

ci-cdbranching-strategydevops
LaunchDarkly2018-09-03

Operational guidelines for creating, managing, and retiring feature toggles safely.

feature-flagsrelease-managementprogressive-delivery
Testing Community2016-04-22

Encourages earlier testing (unit, security, performance) in the SDLC to catch defects sooner.

testing-strategyquality-assurancedevops
Pact Foundation2019-05-11

Consumer-driven contract testing methodology to ensure micro-service compatibility.

testingmicroservicescontracts
PrinciplesOfChaos.org2017-09-19

Run controlled experiments to build confidence in system resilience under turbulent conditions.

resilience-testingsrefailure-mode
FinOps Foundation2020-06-30

Shared responsibility model for cloud spend: Inform, Optimize, Operate phases.

cloud-costgovernanceoptimization
IBM2019-04-01

End-to-end practices merging agile, DevOps, and design thinking for cloud transformation.

digital-transformationagilecloud-native
Scaled Agile Inc.2018-10-02

Scaled Agile Framework’s model for continuous exploration, integration, deployment, and release on demand.

scaled-agileci-cdvalue-stream
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 272022-10-25

Industry baseline for information-security policies and management controls.

information-securitycontrolscompliance
NIST2023-01-26

Guidelines to integrate trustworthiness considerations into the design, development, and deployment of AI systems.

ai-governancerisk-managementresponsible-ai
European Parliament & Council2024-02-13

First comprehensive regulatory framework for trustworthy AI in the European Union.

regulationai-governancecompliance
Google2018-06-07

Seven commitments guiding the ethical development and deployment of AI at Google.

ai-ethicsresponsible-aipolicy
Microsoft2022-06-21

Company-wide governance framework translating principles into measurable requirements.

ai-governancepolicyethics
OpenAI2023-03-14

Mitigation strategies (RLHF, red-teaming, tiered access) for large language model deployment.

ai-safetyalignmentllm
HashiCorp2020-08-12

Guidelines for writing reusable, versioned, and documented Terraform modules.

iacterraformmodule-best-practices
Helm Maintainers2019-10-05

Recommendations for structure, naming, versioning, and values of Helm charts.

kubernetespackage-managementhelm
CIS & Docker2021-05-18

Steps to build minimal, non-root, signed container images with SBOMs.

containerssecurityhardening
NIST2020-08-11

Conceptual zero-trust model: continuous verification, least privilege, assume breach.

zero-trustnetwork-securityarchitecture
International Assembly for Privacy Commissioners2018-01-15

Framework embedding privacy into systems engineering from the outset.

privacydesign-principlesgdpr
Vibgrate (Draft)2024-05-01

Iterative roadmap for refactoring, re-platforming, and replacing legacy systems using automation and AI.

legacy-migrationai-assistedproject-management