Understanding the Current-State of Your SharePoint Migration
In one of my favorite scenes from the Mel Brooks movie Spaceballs, the heroes -- played by John Candy and Bill Pullman -- narrowly escape the bad guys in hyperspace when the villains miscalculate their hyper-jump and effectively “go plaid” (they leave behind a tartan warp signature) as they fly past in a blur of light.
As utterly ridiculous this scene is, the writers stumbled upon a metaphor that is borderline existential: by overestimating their measurements by even a fraction of a degree, the villains not only missed their intended target – they wound up in a completely different galaxy. When presenting on SharePoint migration planning, I often connect this story to the common pitfalls of failing to properly understand current-state and future-state designs. Not properly understanding the current system (functional and operational gaps, business processes and workflows) may only appear to be small fractions in your measurements, but when applied against the life of your project or product, those miscalculations could have major impact to your bottom line.
In my recent ECM Connection article (11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration), I posited that every SharePoint migration begins as an extensive business analyst activity. What I mean by this is that prior to any system implementation or redesign, you need to seek to understand the environment goals and purpose:
- What works in the current design?
- What doesn’t work?
- What are the organizational “must have” requirements and priorities?
- What are the “nice to have” features?
- What is the goal of the project?
- What are the key use cases that drive how the environment is used?
Based on these requirements, the analyst will then begin to model out the “to be” or future-state of the environment. How can you design your new environment if you don’t have a clear picture of what people do, and how they do it, within your current environment? Failure to understand the present leads to mistakes in the future.
As we designed the Davinci Migrator, we took into account the phased, iterative planning process. Migration is about transforming your existing system to meet operational needs. It’s as much about retooling current sites and content as it is about deploying new technology. Understand what you have to work with, have a vision for what it should look like, and try not to go plaid in the process. (Read the full article here)
For more information on the Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010, click here.