As you evaluate your move to the cloud, you might be wondering how much effort is needed on your organization’s part. How much of your time will the process take? What will you need to provide to your cloud provider? There are a lot of unknowns; we’re here to help.
After deploying cloud solutions for nearly 20 years, we have the migration process down to a science. We’ve outlined everyone’s roles and responsibilities to simplify a very complex process.
YOUR ORGANIZATION’S ROLE
We try to make it as easy as possible for our clients to move to the cloud. We ask only that you provide an Executive Sponsor and Technical Lead. The Technical Lead will be our main point of contact throughout the process, and the Executive Sponsor will work with us to accomplish the organization’s goals in the process.
Executive Sponsor
- Champion the effort.
- Provide high-level oversight, direction, and support.
- Ensure project meets goals.
- Address any significant budget issues.
- Approve any major scope changes.
- Provide resources, if needed.
- Approve project initiation and conclusion.
- Meet regularly throughout effort.
- Approve the project charter(s).
Technical Lead
- Provide technical/development resources.
- Meet regularly throughout effort.
- Review and provide approval at key junctures of the project.
- Approve or recommend scope changes.
- Approve the project charter.
SOFTWARE OR TECHNICAL VENDORS
Throughout the migration process, there is bound to be outside vendors that will play a part in your new cloud environment. This is often software vendors or other technology partners. During the migration process, we’ll ask that they provide a technical contact whom we can coordinate with to ensure a smooth transition.
Technical Lead
- Perform installation and/or configuration and provide technical guidance of mission critical client software.
- Assist with migration.
- Ensure successful post migration functionality.
CLOUD PARTNER ROLES
With a quality cloud partner, they’ll take on most of the heavy lifting during the migration process. Their team will become an extension of your team, and they’ll have defined roles and responsibilities that make the process simple.
Project Manager
- Responsible for the overall success of the project.
- Manage and lead the project team.
- Recruit project staff and consultants, where necessary.
- Manage coordination of the partners and working groups engaged in project work.
- Facilitate scope definition including functionality and technology.
- Facilitate project plan development to set expectations for deliverables and schedule.
- Develop and maintain a detailed work plan.
- Manage project deliverables in line with the project plan.
- Record and manage project issues and escalate where necessary.
- Resolve cross-functional issues at project level.
- Manage project scope and change control and escalate issues where necessary
- Monitor project progress and performance.
- Provide status reports to the project sponsor and PMO Director.
- Coordinate with, and update progress to, project steering board/senior management.
- Manage project evaluation and dissemination activities.
- Coordinate phase sign-offs.
- Work closely with users to ensure the project meets business needs.
- Work with internal technical teams to ensure project is on track.
Technical Lead
- Serve as a liaison between the client Technical Lead and Netgain.
- Represent technical area in solution requirements, design, build, test, and deployment.
- Attend meetings and review documents as needed.
- Report to Project Manager for the project.
- Lead technical solution requirements and design for software and infrastructure components.
- Link with other Netgain technical resources as needed.
- Ensure successful build, test, and deployment from technical perspective.
Account Manager
- Be informed through all stages of the project.
- Handle change requests and billing concerns.
- Establish and maintain long term relationship with client.
- Serve as a liaison between Netgain and Client.
Support Champion
- Engage early in the project to familiarize themselves with the client environment.
- Be an advocate / SME during and after transition to normalized support.
- Establish working relationship with client.
When you have the right team in place, your migration to the cloud doesn’t have to be a long process with unexpected hiccups. It can be smooth, planned, and deliberate.
You’ve built your team, and now you’re ready. It’s time to head to the cloud – see you there!