Infrastructure strategy should trace directly back to customer value through a chain of alignment: **Customer value → Organizational strategy → Product/tech strategy → Infrastructure strategy** Each layer enables the layers above it. When the chain is broken, infrastructure becomes a drag rather than an enabler. ## The Gap in Practice Engineers are often puzzled when asked about commercial strategy. Business leaders are often puzzled when asked about infrastructure constraints. This gap means infrastructure is designed without knowing what it needs to enable — and business decisions are made without knowing what the infrastructure actually costs to change. ## How Business Goals Map to Infrastructure Capabilities (Table 1-3 examples) | Business goal | Infrastructure capability needed | Measure | |--------------|----------------------------------|---------| | Deliver new features quickly and reliably | Provide infra for dev, test, host | DORA four key metrics | | Grow by adding new markets/regions | Add hosting for new regions efficiently | Time + incremental cost to add region | | Provide reliable service | Zero-downtime deployments, fast recovery | Uptime SLAs, MTTR | | Control costs | Visibility into resource usage, optimization | Cost per unit of value delivered | | Compliance and security | Auditability, policy enforcement as code | Audit pass rate, time to remediate | ## Application When designing infrastructure architecture, start from the business goals the organization is actually trying to achieve. Infrastructure that optimizes for technical elegance in isolation tends to conflict with business priorities. --- *Source: [[Infrastructure as Code, 3rd Edition — Kief Morris]] (Kief Morris, O'Reilly 2025) — Ch 1 — What Is Infrastructure as Code?*