As you map out your Atlassian Cloud migration journey, there are many decisions along the way. What apps and data should you migrate? What apps may not be fully cloud-ready? What adjustments will your team need to make to their workflows to remain productive in the cloud?
These are indeed important questions and finding the answers shouldn’t be done in haste.
In fact, after many cloud migrations projects, we’ve found that proper scoping is the key to cloud success. It’s particularly crucial for larger and more complex environments. That’s why we focus on scoping assessments separately from the migration project, so that the unknowns are spotted and decisions are made in advance – before any cloud migration processes begin.
What are the benefits to this approach? Consider these:
- Expectations are clearer. No migration project can foresee every risk, or opportunity. But by taking a “measure twice, cut once” approach to your cloud migration, you can have more confidence that you know what to expect. This will enable you to set realistic priorities, goals and timelines before you are already in too deep to adapt quickly.
- Potential obstacles are uncovered. Effective project scoping assessments will look thoroughly at every aspect of your migration so that you can see the obstacles before they stand in your way and overcome them early.
- Risk is reduced. Planning a cloud migration for your Atlassian environment is a significant move – one you don’t want to be costly, time consuming or a drain on developer productivity. By taking the time to properly scope your environment before any migration processes begin you can ensure that these risks are avoided as much as possible.
- You can clean house. Your cloud journey is an opportunity for a fresh start to enhance efficiency and productivity, so don’t simply move what’s already broken on premises to the cloud. Moving junk data or unused applications won’t do anyone any good and will just increase cost and frustration in your new environment. Use scoping assessment best practices to identify what you need to move and what you don’t so that your migration is more concise and accurate.
- Complexities will be uncovered. We’ve all experienced it; over time every environment has some aspects that have become a tangled mess of complexity. Use scoping assessments to help identify these on prem complexities early, so you don’t repeat them once in the cloud.
- Migration timelines are more accurate. Effective project scoping assessments will also give you the visibility and detail you need to project your migration timeline with greater accuracy. This will enable you to make better, more informed, decisions about migration priorities and any project impact that might be in store for production development teams.
When it’s time to make the move to Atlassian Cloud, you want to do it with confidence and the full visibility you need to avoid risk and enhance time to value. At Forty8Fifty Labs, we’ve instituted an iterative approach to our migration services to achieve just that. By decoupling the assessment from the migration we’re able to effectively scope your migration effort, identify obstacles early and outline key decision criteria so that you have the clear expectations you need to accelerate your cloud journey. Learn more about our Atlassian Cloud migration services here, then give us a call for a consult. We’ll help you execute your cloud migration without unexpected surprises.
