Migrating to Alfresco Wrap-Up

In the sixth installment of our “Migrating to…” webinar and white paper series, we were pleased to be joined by Mike Mahon, CEO of Zia Consulting, to talk about the best tips and tricks for Alfresco migration. Since he provided some great feedback and insights, we thought we could take a minute to share some of his comments.

1.     There is no magic wand for migrations

As we have said in each of these webinars, there is not a magic wand for migrations. Mike used this tip as an opportunity to talk about the fact that tools can’t manage all three important aspects of a migration: people, process, and technology. Push-button migration solutions are limited in how they perform the actual migration, but what they ignore are the people involved and the business processes organizations seek to improve through the migration to another system. You need to involve the users that publish and consume the data in your migration to get the best results.

2.     The juxtaposed tips

In our webinar, we have the tips “Your Users are In Charge” and “Your Users Are Wrong” back to back. Mike loved the juxtaposition of these tips because, while it is important to be sure to listen to the needs of users and involve them in the migration process, you also want to make sure that your decisions aren’t made because of the users’ resistance to change. What you should do, according to Mike, is involve them in the migration processes so that they can understand the reasons for change and that their best interests are a huge player in the migration. He discussed an example in which they involved users by including in some hands-on co-creation of the target system to get them over the challenge of resisting change. This gave the users a better understanding of how the new system was going to be used, and what their processes would be moving forward.

3.     Your new system shouldn’t look like your old one

When we talk about this tip, we tend to say things like, “This is the reason you’re migrating from one system to another.” This is usually a migration driver, however, Mike addressed this one by talking about instances in which organizations pull out their drawn-up plans from the implementation of their legacy systems and ask, “Can we do this?” Mike then answers with, “Yes, we can, but no we shouldn’t.” When migrating to a new ECM system, you are faced with the unique opportunity to take advantage of new technology and functionality. In many cases, these next-generation ECM systems proved better, more intuitive ways to manage your content, and you should take full advantage while you have the chance. While it is sometimes easier to just copy your legacy system over to the new one, it should not be included in migration best practices.

Overall, the message of the webinar was to make sure you get the right people involved to make your migration a success. Push-button solutions aren’t going to do much of anything aside from move content from point A to point B. Successful migrations involve users and partners to help make the best decisions about how the target system should be used. There was also a good Q&A session at the end of the webinar. If you’d like to listen to the webinar in its entirety, click here. We have also published a printable PDF of the tips and tricks here. If you want more information about the Velocity Content Migration solution, email info@seeunity.com.