Tips for Software Migrations: Part 1 - Setting the Stage

Given that software migrations are a rather common occurrence, I thought it timely to share a few of my learnings gathered over the years, whether it be a multimillion-dollar initiative or a more modest endeavour, the same principles apply. I don’t profess to have gotten all of this right during my time and continue to mature and evolve with each project, but I have learnt a lot over the journey…

People, process, and systems

• People
  Before you even think about venturing down the path of commencing a migration exercise, whether that be onto a new platform or an existing one, choose your team wisely, I cannot even count the number of times we averted a crisis because we had someone on the team who stepped in and found a way out of it.  This is the time to bring the best people off the bench and into the team – tech and non tech, throw your best guns at this or at least have them standing by and ready to enter the fray should they be needed. Now is not the time for anyone to be precious about who is made available to work on the project.
• Processes
  Having inefficient or sub optimal processes in place will unlikely get better just because a new piece of software is being implemented, review your processes in advance and determine whether you will adopt the process dictated by the software or whether the software will be customised to meet the required process, the tail shouldn’t wag the dog here, if the objective of the project is to maximise process efficiency then understand how that will happen in advance of commencing, these things rarely happen by chance during the course of the project.  If the view is that we ‘hope’ everything will work out, ‘hope’ is not generally a winning strategy.
• Systems
  Whilst you are ensuring you have the right people in place and a strategy for your business processes, choose the right software and vendor to suit your business needs, this should be both tangible and intangible i.e. the software does what you want it to do (noting that sometimes near enough is good enough), and the provider(s) are in cultural alignment with your business.  Having a provider who has good software but a poor record of managing relationships does not bode well for success.

Measure three times, cut once

Do your due diligence on every aspect of the provider and the project, I will provide a more detailed run through of how to do this in another article. Suffice to say that the choice of provider can make or break your project, especially at the pointy end when the pressure is on. The last 20% makes up 80% of the pressure in many of the projects I have been involved in.

Plan a, b, c, d

Always have multiple scenarios in your mind at each step of the journey, how and when you communicate these is up to you but expecting that the chosen path will always be the right one and shouldn’t require deviation is likely to end badly.

Define success early on

All stakeholders on the project will have their own definition of success, it may be the deprecation of a legacy platform, an increase in revenue, a decrease in costs, the elimination of single points of failure, a combination of all of that or a myriad of other objectives.  Once you define your ‘north star’ stick to it and don’t deviate, regardless of what external or internal forces are trying to redefine the target. If the project steering committee hasn’t approved a change in the success criteria, don’t let it happen by stealth. This wont always make you popular but you must always be focusing on the big picture and not the minor skirmishes which you may encounter along the way.  

Good governance and guardrails

Good governance and guardrails don’t have to adversely impact execution speed - whilst robust governance is valued, it can also be balanced with collaborative, agile and efficient execution. Try to thread this throughout the project management processes and remember that the team are there to deliver an outcome, not to become experts in writing documents and mastering Excel.

This article was crafted exclusively by human expertise, without the use of artificial intelligence.

Part 2 coming soon…