As portals and web channels take their rightful place as a standard and critical channel for delivering business value and services in and around the enterprise, the evolution of these channels over time creates an increasingly complex consideration when migration to a new platform and/or a new design becomes a priority. It is the increasing complexity of these "as is" states that has caused us to develop deep best practices and thoughtful approaches for realizing Migration.

LDS' Migration Planning and Execution services start in the early strategy, or Assess phase, of the channel's lifecycle where our assessment of the current state, and its relevant characteristics and assets, provides an early perspective into our analysis approach for Migration. This early Approach is iterated through the remaining phases of methodology, to support design, planning for migration and, ultimately, to supporting people and their processes for successfully completing migration.

Migration Planning and Execution is closely related to Operational Governance Planning and Design services, in which Migration is considered a one-time or focused event to realize a specific portal or web site release, and Operational Governance is considered the ongoing operational practices once the site is in production. A logical overlap, though, exists between Migration and Operational Governance, and LDS manages these as integrated and aligned services.

Value

Effective migration planning and execution ensures that the portal design integrity and investment is fully protected and not undermined by an incomplete or inconsistent migration. The LDS migration protocols and best practices ensure the successful reconciliation of the current portal state and the desired, to be, portal solution.

Deliverables

Typical LDS Migration Planning and Execution deliverables include:

• Deployment and Migration Approach is developed in the strategy phase of our methodology and focuses on the initial analysis of the current portal state in which assets are broadly categorized and characterized in order to develop an early analytic model for framing the scope and challenges associated with migration. Here, critical success factors are identified, the detailed analysis path defined, and a basic framework is established that is iterated to full realization in the Migration Plan that follows.
• Migration Plan is the detailed framework for realizing a successful migration effort, including the thorough documentation of the current state, characterized in a useful, rational representation that supports the rules for migration. Along with the protocols needed to execute migrations – the tools, learning resources and workbooks, and associated procedures and design guidelines – the Migration Plan establishes all artifacts for successful content and asset migration execution into the to-be design.
• Content Migration Execution, LDS helps our clients complete migration through on-the-ground operational activities, such as editing copy, populating content management systems, publishing content to portal pages, creating job aids, quality assurance and testing, and conducting compliance audits.

Investment

Please contact John Fee, LDS VP of Business Development, for more information.