Assess and source key skill sets from legacy source to cloud target:
Cloud migrations are not just about low cost and unlimited capacity. They are also about adopting the newest technologies and modernization. Teams focusing on cloud migrations absolutely must have skilled cloud engineers and developers adept new operating systems, development platforms, DEVOPS tools and processes and modern agile team formations. Needing a wide variety of technical skill sets is a given. However, bringing them together in a well-functioning team led by project managers, scrum masters and engineering leads are essential to success.
Another key area, and often overlooked, is the need for legacy technology and skill sets. Being able to decompose and understand how source technology operates is a key element to planning and execution. Given the age of some of these technologies, lack of documentation and diminishing institutional knowledge and memory, this is often one of the biggest team challenges facing cloud migration programs. It is important to spend more time up-front assessing the legacy technology risk to understand the gaps and mitigating them.
Use a RACI to specific Roles and Responsibilities:
Teams planning and executing cloud migrations are made up of diverse elements across the board. There are many overlapping roles & responsibilities, often leading to confusion, misunderstandings, and missteps. Team members need to understand their roles clearly and feel comfortable reporting where they are not working and avoid creating tension within the team. Project managers need to focus on developing and implementing a RACI early in the project as part of the planning and before any execution begins. It is critical the RACI is implemented properly, with all key team members having input into it and signing off. In addition, the RACI should be reviewed throughout the project and changes made where the exigencies of the project make it necessary.
Embrace your partners and 3rd parties:
The days of executing large transformational projects or migrations in-house are over. There are simply too many diverse skill sets and knowledge required, and most organizations simply do not have them. When forming a cloud migration team, direct participation of vendors and 3rd parties will be required. Teams should not only expect to have external partners involved but should embrace them. These partners have key specialized technology and capabilities, focusing on key aspects of the migration pipeline. The investments these companies have made in cloud technology must be effectively leveraged and the partner resources integrated into teams and treated as equal team members. Leaders should not forget their success is related to the success of the project and they should be eager to contribute and bring value.
The Essential Roles:
The success of a migration project requires the individual teams involved working in concert with each other. Collaboration and communication are paramount to the migration’s success.
Some of the key roles involved in a cloud migration include:
Executive Stakeholders set and communicate the goals of the project and ensure the objectives are aligned to the organization’s strategic goals. Given the significance of the business impact of a cloud migration, stakeholders will represent the interest of a wide variety of parties, such as CEO, CTO, CIO, CDO and CSO, to name a few.
Program Managers have a bird’s eye view of the project and oversee governance to ensure that each work package is being performed as planned. Program Managers make sure that deliverables are met and communication with Executive Stakeholders is ongoing. There may be several types of program managers depending on the scope of the migration effort and the change management impact across the organization. Each program manager will represent a specific component or stakeholder of the overall governance of the project.
Solution Leads are responsible for the technical components, such as, the common architecture, security, and implementation of the migration. Solution Leads are also responsible for approving automation tooling that will be used throughout the project, this includes tooling to crawl through the applications to understand data lineage and relationships, code translation, application modernization and automated testing.
Scrum Masters will report to the Solution Lead. This individual monitors the development of the technical teams to ensure their members are producing the required packages of work, and there is nothing that is impeding their progress.
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Data Migration Leads are dedicated entirely to data migration planning and all the downstream consuming application planning. This includes historical data migration (data extraction and data upload), and the plan for how long you will have to run in parallel before cut-over.
Cloud Provider Architect represents the cloud partner and is responsible for providing technical guidance for ingestion, security, performance tuning and optimization. Additional activities may also include set-up of cloud environments ensuring the platform meets compliance requirements.
Test Engineering Lead oversees the teams responsible for performance testing, system integration testing and end-to-end testing.
Cloud migrations are complex endeavors that require multiple people working simultaneously on a variety of critical tasks. The right team will set you on your path to success.
About Next Pathway
Next Pathway is the Automated Cloud Migration company. Powered by the SHIFT™ Migration Suite, Next Pathway automates the end-to-end challenges companies experience when migrating applications to the cloud. For more information, please visit nextpathway.com.
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