Guide to a SharePoint Migration
This blog will show how enterprises can approach their SharePoint migration with a few tried and tested action plans. This blog also details how you can successfully define a migration roadmap, strategy, and goals for a successful SharePoint migration.
There are four big transitions you’ll have to consider, before you dive into how to set up a pre-migration strategy.
There are four big transitions you’ll have to consider, before you dive into how to set up a pre-migration strategy.
The Different Paths to Modern Management
The following explains the four transitions and
migrations that can be executed—successful or not.
Cloud-first
The Cloud-first path is perfect for startups, as
there is no need for a migration. Essentially, everything is created in the
cloud. Think: Cloud first and only cloud.
Big Switch Transition
The Big Switch path is often considered the most
risky strategy, as organizations can never verify if the transition (also known
as “big bang transition”) will end up as a success or a failure.
Group by Group Transition
The Group by Group transition is the most secure
migration strategy, as organizations can migrate stack per stack (e.g. cloud
hybrid search, hybrid metadata, hybrid OneDrive, etc.) or via user group by
user Group (e.g. millennials, gen X, etc.).
Iterative (Co-management)
The Iterative transition helps build bridges between
“your premises” and “their premises,” which is also known as a hybrid
configuration. In many cases, this is the most complex and expensive path.
In a practical real-world scenario, it doesn’t
necessarily matter exactly which migration strategy you execute. In any case,
you should define a pre-migration and post-migration strategy.
Analyze Your Drawbacks & Design the Technology
Because basic concepts are initially unacknowledged, many migrations fail. As the SharePoint or Office 365 administrator or architect, you need to fully consider the following skills:
- Check for deprecated or added features, and if necessary, modify your topology. Don’t view the migration as an as-is migration and assume that everything will suddenly work without implementing any architectural changes.
- Never ignore custom solutions, as they can be extremely critical to your business owners.
- Communicate with your champions and organize meetings. Assess what your business owners’ requirements are. Benefit from these meetings to see what the drawbacks of today are and design the technology of tomorrow.
- Get to know about the culture of the organization. For example, don’t propose a Yammer-based solution if the IT Director of your organization doesn’t like conversations. The business and business requirements should drive the technology, not the other way around.
· To know about the organization's culture, collect feedback—use Microsoft
Forms.
· Organize 1-on-1 champion/influencer/stakeholder interviews.
· See all SharePoint-related ticket history for at least 1 year back.
Select Your Champions & Influencers
After those meetings, 1-on-1s, and workshops,
it’s up to you to define your strategy and propose it to different stacks, such
as IT, C-Level Managers, and Business Owners.
Essentially, your strategy should contain 3
parts: the definition, vision, and goals.
Here is a real world example:
Definition
Stake holders wants to improve their productivity by providing workspace empowered by Office 365.
Vision
Organization X wants to improve their
productivity by providing the modern workplace empowered by Office 365.
Goals
As you can see, I have a clear definition. I want
to use the modern collaboration apps anywhere, and those apps should be my base
for my next modern workplace. All of them contain one goal: having a Serverless
environment in the coming years.
Whenever you have your strategy defined and
validated by the different stacks, it’s time to report. Communicate the
following via emails, campaigns, innovative sessions, or meetings to concerned
groups:
- Communicate your vision & goals.
- Communicate your strategy.
- Communicate your roadmap.
Don’t:
- Communicate what you can’t produce.
- Communicate what’s out of scope.
- Communicate too fast.
Now that we have our strategy validated by the
different stacks, it’s time to begin with our transition. But before we talk
about executing the migration, we need to know how our SharePoint environment
is looking—hopefully, it’s not overloaded.
Many organizations have poorly implemented and
integrated SharePoint environments!
The following needs to be addressed before
issuing any migration tasks.
1. Think about your present needs.
How many users do I have? How many Sites and Site Collections?
What’s the average size of my database?
What are the geographical needs of my organization?
Are stand by terms familiar within the organization?
How critical are my sites?
2. Think about your future needs.
What will the size of my databases be in the future?
What is the expected user growth?
Is topology scalability a must for my next environment?
3. Are there any customizations that can be
replaced by out-of-the-box capabilities?
What kinds of customization do you have in the organization? Full Trust
Solutions or Provider Hosted Apps?
How many do I have? Can they be replaced by OOTB features?
Is there integration with other applications or complex workflows?
Any Custom Master Pages?
4. Time is money.
How many waves do I have? (e.g. Pre-production, Qualify, DR, HA, if you are
still on-premises.)
How long do I have per wave?
Are my wave priorities set depending on goals, vision, strategy, and
roadmap?
5. Prepare a test scenario for your newly created
environment.
Ensure that everything is migrated successfully
Run/test all workloads
Including solutions – think full trust solutions
Worst case scenarios – think disaster recovery environment
New capabilities and their integration – think Flow, PowerApps
New experiences – think Hybrid Search Service Application
Check all user permissions
Remove access to the old SharePoint
These responses are not only going to influence
your way of work, they will also help you decide if the platform is going to be
a fully SaaS or IaaS/PaaS environment.
Conclusion
Migrations aren’t easy. It requires a lot of
input from different stacks, business owners, and technology related decisions.
In the end, it’s important to stay aware of the
following tips:
·
Migrations are phased, so they should be flexible and not
technology-driven.
·
Migrations are iterative, so you need to plan, execute, and release. Your
governance strategy should determine if you migrate per site, stack, or content
database.
·
Migrations are error-prone, so be prepared for errors, as each environment
has his own difficulties.
·
Remember to inventory and define what will be Removed, Transformed, or
Modified.
·
Communicate the changes and what’s coming next.
Remove
Legacy files and unused sites.
Unnecessary connections to third parties.
Transform
Get rid of legacy applications and use PowerApps, Flow, Planner, Delve,
etc.
Use out-of-the-box functionalities and capabilities when possible.
Migrate
Manually
PowerShell
Metalogix Expert
SharePoint
Migration Tool
SharePoint
Migration Assessment Tool
Sharegate
Comments
Post a Comment