It is overwhelming to want to create a piece of art on MS Project by lunchtime. You start to draw the blue lines. Your inner voice whispers Douglas Adams quotes: “I love deadlines.” I love the howling sound they make when they fly by.
Your GANTT might be a visual masterpiece. All those beautiful blue lines with roles that have guestimates. It makes you feel in control. It is possible to predict the time, cost, and quality of your project. Here’s a plan. It took me half an hour. We have a plan! !
You don’t. You have a picture with some job titles and nice blue lines. You have the illusion of control. You looked busy your first day.
Every project manager is taught project management is about creating a temporary management environment in order to achieve the desired outcome. There are a few common ingredients that will make a cloud migration to Amazon, Google, Azure, Amazon, or an indie Managed Service Provider a success. These are the no-brainers, which are all the things that we have been taught and know make a project a success.
What should you do first when starting a cloud migration project? There is always scepticism about anything that can be transformed. Skepticism about your ability to deliver anything transformative. Skepticism about the ability of your team to deliver anything transformative. Internal scepticism about what the solution is. This combination can lead to procrastination in your own life and within the company. You need a reason for procrastination to be overcome and a reason for everyone to pay attention to that reason.
A migration to the cloud should begin with a low-criticality business application. This is common sense. We can learn from the students at Sensei Ohno by looking at common misconceptions. Low business critical app approaches don’t get attention. Who cares if the SharePoint app that stores information about safety and health policy goes in the clouds?
If the migration program starts with a business-critical application, it’s a different story. Because the app is critical to the organization, there is a sense of urgency. People notice when you mess with something that is business critical. It’s hard to find the right balance between success and failure when you want to be able to focus your hearts and minds. A successful outcome can prove that it is possible, which can literally end all forms of scepticism.
Donato Piccinno is an MBA graduate and an accredited project manager. He has 20 years of experience in FTSE 500 companies delivering business change, cloud and infrastructure projects. He offers a wide range of technology solutions that are managed to meet client expectations and include management of organisational changes.
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