Migration projects often involve a lot of disruption, but they can result in boosts to the productivity and efficiency of your organization. However, too many companies ruin their migration projects by making the following mistakes.
1. Starting Too Late
Not leaving enough time is the surest way to destroy a migration project’s chance of success. I remember a financial services company that brought us on board to help with a migration project that had to be completed within three months. By the time we’d consulted with the client about what needed to be done, there were only about two months left to actually perform the migration.
Plus, this wasn’t a simple data migration project — the company had three data centers that needed to be closed down by the end of the year and each one was running a different environment. We had to migrate roughly 700 GB of content split between SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, and a third-party document management system called LiveLink into a single SharePoint 2013 environment.
We were able to perform this migration within the short timeline but were not able to provide as much value as we normally are able to achieve.
2. Migrating Redundant Data
Tip: Knowing what to migrate is key to streamlining your project.
When we started working on our client’s migration project, we discovered there was a lot of content in the existing environments that hadn’t been accessed in years. Therefore, our first step was to work with the client to find out whether any of this old content could be deleted.
If we didn’t clear out content that the client no longer needed before starting the data migration, we would have run the risk of making the migration much longer and more complicated than needed.
Through careful inventory analysis and consultation with the client, we were able to delete enough of the old content repositories to reduce the total size of the migration project by 25 percent. Taking the time for this review was key to meeting the deadline.
3. Lacking Organization
Tip: The best time to organize is before you migrate.
If the file system is disorganized, more time is needed to implement a successful migration. Our client had a body of content that had evolved organically via several acquisitions, resulting in a complete lack of organization.
Ideally, the migration would have been a great opportunity for us to reorganize the content and consider how to optimize the user experience, but the tight deadline made this impossible.
It will take the client another few months to tackle this reorganization now the migration process has been completed.
4. Failing to Identify Potential Problems
Tip: Allow time in your plan for unexpected problems.
Unexpected issues are bound to crop up in any migration project. In the case of our client, these involved problems accessing certain files and folders, including HR documents that contained personal employee information. We had to work with someone at the organization who had permission to access the documents. This arrangement obviously increased the complexity of the data migration project and made meeting the deadline even more difficult.
A thorough review before you begin a migration project should catch most of the potential issues that are likely to come up. But, it is always important to leave some time in your schedule to account for the unexpected.
5. Know When To Call In Reinforcements.
Tip: Don’t wait to ask for help if you need it.
The company we worked with needed to decommission the data centers by the end of the year. Although, they knew the deadline was looming they waited until three months before the end of the year to get in touch with us. The company originally planned to tackle this data migration project in-house, but eventually realized they needed help.
There is no reason not to consult with potential partners before losing any time in your schedule. It is better to consider all your options up front even if you do decide the project will be handled in-house.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to a big migration project, the key is to start planning and preparing as early as possible. This allows you to make strategic decisions that will benefit your organization in the long run, rather than short-term tactical moves that simply allow you to meet a looming deadline.
Want to learn more about how to improve efficiency when moving your content to the cloud? Download our white paper, 7 Office 365 Migration Best Practices
