In many cloud migrations I’ve worked on, communication is the most important factor. More specifically, over-communication. You need to strive to keep everyone informed at all times – providing a status update for as many as possible, as often as possible.

This is critical because migrations are risky (and potentially dangerous) for the whole company. They impact all areas. So, in this article, I’m going to briefly outline how I maintain a high level of over-communication during a cloud migration.

Set up a dashboard…

…and fill it with useful, informative status updates!  Over-communication doesn’t mean you have to send hundreds of messages or emails a day. It does, however, mean you need to be clear as to where people can go to see the current status of the migration. Most importantly, people need to know when they themselves are to be required for something to do with the migration. 

So, the key here is to have one place everyone can see – which is exactly what a dashboard is great for. It’ll also make your life easier – you’ll only need to update one thing rather than many!

Only note the most relevant updates

Some updates will be technical. Others will be customer or process-focused. Not everyone needs to know all of these (like that amazing script you wrote to migrate 10TB of data!) The relevant teams will only want to see what is most important to them. So, make sure the updates are clearly separated into the right place for the right people within the dashboard.

Get others to help you!

Yes, a primary lead should be guiding the migration, but that doesn’t mean only they can update the dashboard. Allow other members of teams, and people you work with, to help out here.

Plan status meetings…

…besides just board meetings. Sometimes it’s good to have a meeting to simply check everything is on-track, or decide if a pivot needs to be made for an application. If and when chaos unfolds and things change, make sure you’re ready to update everyone.

In summary: the importance of keeping others informed

This refers back to the underlying point of the article – over-communication – but is good to reiterate. Put simply, keeping others informed as much as possible, will keep the project moving as efficiently as possible. All migration projects have timelines that are rarely ever perfectly kept in order. You have to be able to adjust and move with the changes – and communication goes hand-in-hand with that.   

What do you think? Have any thoughts on what I’ve mentioned here, or any advice/stories of your own? Feel free to share them down in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.