Waterfall planning is out of fashion, but let’s face it, detailed plans have their place. A complicated IT infrastructure project is that place.

You have to start with a proper plan that includes not just the transformation but also the current state and the desired state. This is the only way to ensure that you’ve covered all your bases.

The time to go agile is when you’re ready to start moving.

But before we get to that, let’s take a look at five actions you have to take even before taking the first step.

0. Understand why you’re moving to the cloud

First you have to know what you want the cloud FOR. Digital transformation is a business decision, not a technical one. Start by making sure you understand the opportunities and benefits you actually hope to gain.

Moving to the cloud means your business will potentially expand on a global scale. Make your business model ready for the new markets and new opportunities, and align your IT strategy with your new goals.

1. Understand your current systems and processes, and assess your cloud readiness

If you’ve been in business for a while, your company probably has a varied collection of legacy systems. While those are a headache by themselves, also consider that legacy systems come with legacy processes.

The needs of all businesses evolve over time, and the systems that met the needs of yesterday no longer match the needs of today. Workarounds and shortcuts arise to navigate the complexities of existing systems.

You need to understand what are the needs that current processes evolved to meet. When you’ve mapped out the current state of your IT systems and processes, you’re ready to assess if your business is mature enough to benefit from moving to the cloud right now. You may have to lay some preparatory groundwork before the bigger work of digital transformation begins.

2. Map out the overall desired end state for your business

Now you know why you want the transformation and where you’re starting. Let’s think about what the end result should look like. What is the ultimate end state that you’re going to be working towards?

Take the time to look far enough ahead.

What’s the business logic you aim to achieve?
What strategy are you setting that your cloud-based infrastructure must make possible?

3. Decide how you’ll handle the technical aspects

This step is not about the process of moving. It’s about planning for the daily and yearly operations that involve your new managed data platform.

While your PaaS or DBaaS vendor will be taking care of the daily infrastructure management tasks, there’s still a lot to consider:

High-level architecture: how will the elements of your managed infrastructure interface with each other? How will they interact with systems you’re still maintaining in-house?
Security: how will you set up access control?
Measuring and maintaining efficiency: How will you continually review and optimize cloud services? This must be a regular review process, and be a part of your wider IT and cloud strategy.
Delivering new services and systems internally and to customers: do you need to set up a [DevOps](link to devex post) or [CloudOps](link to cloudops post) team?

4. Decide how you’ll handle the business and financial aspects

This step is not about Moving Day either. It’s about the long haul.

Consider the real, tangible impact of a cloud-transformed operation on your business; this is a follow-up step from #0. Balance cloud transformation with control and change management.

When new services are easy to create and deploy, there’s a danger that the business will sprawl. How will you balance agility with control?
What kind of strong cloud governance framework will you set up?

5. Make a detailed (project) plan for the transformation

Now it’s finally time to think about Moving Day. And remember, it’s not going to be a moving DAY, not even a month. Cloud transformation can take months for an entrenched business.

Your plan should really be very much on the practical level:

Which workloads will move first?
How will you handle the complex workloads?
How will you maintain information security?
How will you implement data safety?

Here it may make sense to look at suitable partners for the move. If your new cloud service provider can’t help, look for an external consultant.

At this stage, you can start opening up your waterfall project to a more agile approach. Define deliverables in a way that preserves their dependencies, but don’t constrain too much. Make room to accommodate any unanticipated and unforeseen turns of events.

Wrapping up

If you want to talk cloud data platforms, come and meet Aiven at the DTX Expo in London on October 12-13, 2022! Our booth is G64

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