How do you work with your cloud migration team?

1 Assess your readiness

Before you start your cloud migration project, you need to assess your current state and your desired outcomes. You need to understand your business goals, your technical requirements, your budget, and your timeline. You also need to evaluate your existing assets, such as data, applications, and infrastructure, and identify which ones are suitable for cloud migration and which ones need to be modified or replaced. You can use tools and frameworks, such as the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) or the Cloud Maturity Model (CMM), to help you with this assessment. You should also involve your stakeholders, such as your customers, your employees, and your vendors, in this process and communicate your vision and expectations.

2 Define your strategy

Once you have assessed your readiness, you need to define your strategy for cloud migration. You need to choose the right cloud service provider (CSP), such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, and the right cloud deployment model, such as public, private, or hybrid. You also need to decide on the best cloud migration method, such as lift-and-shift, refactor, or rebuild. You should consider the pros and cons of each option and how they align with your goals and constraints. You should also define your success metrics and your risk mitigation plan. You should document your strategy and share it with your team and your stakeholders.

3 Build your team

In order to execute your strategy, you need to build a strong and diverse team that can handle the various aspects of cloud migration. Assign roles and responsibilities to your team members and make sure they have the necessary skills, knowledge, and tools. Common roles in a cloud migration team include a project manager, cloud architect, cloud engineer, cloud developer, cloud security specialist, and cloud analyst. Depending on your specific needs and scope, you may need other roles such as a cloud consultant, trainer or support specialist. Additionally, provide regular training and feedback to your team and create an environment of learning and innovation.

4 Execute your plan

Once you have your team in place, you need to execute a structured and iterative process for cloud migration. This process involves discovery, planning, migration, testing, and optimization. During discovery, you must collect and analyze information about your current assets and map them to the cloud environment. Planning requires creating and prioritizing a list of tasks and activities for each asset and assigning them to the responsible team members. Migration is the actual process of moving each asset to the cloud using the appropriate tools and methods; then verifying they work as expected. Testing involves checking the functionality, performance, security, and compatibility of each asset in the cloud environment. Lastly, optimization ensures that assets are efficient, scalable, reliable, secure, and meet success metrics and business goals. Additionally, you should document your progress and communicate it to your team and stakeholders while seeking their feedback.

5 Manage your cloud environment

After you have completed your cloud migration, you need to manage your cloud environment and ensure that it continues to deliver value and meet your needs. You need to monitor and measure the performance, usage, and costs of your cloud environment and the assets and compare them with the baseline and the benchmarks. You also need to update and maintain your cloud environment and the assets and apply the necessary patches, upgrades, or changes. You should also review and evaluate your cloud strategy and your cloud migration project and identify the lessons learned and the best practices. You should also look for new opportunities and challenges and explore new features and innovations that the cloud can offer.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?