Phase F: Migration Planning

Objective    Approach     Inputs     Steps    Outputs

Objective

The objective of this phase is to sort the various implementation projects into priority order. Activities include assessing the dependencies, costs and benefits of the various migration projects. The prioritized list of projects will go on to form the basis of the detailed implementation and migration plan.

Approach

There are some important questions to be asked before embarking on a migration exercise:

• What are the implications of this project on other projects and activities?
• What are the dependencies between this project and other projects and activities?
• What products are needed?
• What components must be developed?
• Does the organization have the resources needed to develop such components?
• What standards are the products or components built on?
• When will they be available?
• Will the products stand the test of time, both because of the technology they use and also because of the viability of the supplier?
• What is the cost of retraining the users?
• What is the likely cultural impact on the user community, and how can it be controlled?
• What is the total cost of the migration, and what benefits will it deliver? It is important to look at actual benefits, and not presumed benefits. Is the funding available?
• Is the migration viable?

Many things affect the answers to these questions, including the current and future architectures, the size of the organization and its complexity, and the value of technology to the core functions of the organization. Other things to consider are the asset value of the current systems, and the level of risk associated with changing the solution and/or the supplier.

Most organizations find that a change of architecture has too much impact on the organization to be undertaken in a single phase. Migration often requires consideration of a number of technical issues, not the least of which are those associated with the means of introducing change to operational systems.

Issues requiring special consideration may include:

• parallel operations
• choices of proceeding with phased migration by subsystem or by function
• the impact of geographical separation on migration

The decisions resulting from these considerations should be incorporated in the implementation plan.

There are a number of strategies for developing the migration and implementation plan.

The most successful basic strategy is to focus on projects that will deliver short-term pay-offs and so create an impetus for proceeding with longer-term projects.

One common approach is to implement business functions in a data-driven chronological sequence: i.e, create the applications and supporting technology that create data before those that process the data, before those that simply store, archive or delete data.

For example, the following detailed description of this approach is taken from: SPE 68794, "Implementing Enterprise Architecture - Putting Quality Information in the Hands of Oil and Gas Knowledge Workers", G. A. Cox, R. M. Johnston, SPE, and R. M. Palermo, Aera Energy LLC, Copyright 2001, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.

1. Determine the future disposition of current systems. Each current system is classified as:
   • Mainstream systems - part of the future information system.
   • Contain systems - expected to be replaced or modified in the planning horizon (next 3 years).
   • Replace systems - to be replaced in the planning horizon.

   The current system disposition decisions should be made by business people, not IT people.

2. Applications should be combined or split into parts to facilitate sequencing and implementation. This rearrangement of applications creates a number of projects, a project being equivalent to an application or to combinations or parts of applications.

3. Develop the data sequence for the projects as described in the data architecture. Using the CRUD (Create / Read / Update / Delete) matrix developed as part of the Data Architecture, sequence the projects such that projects that create data precede projects that read or update that data.

4. Develop an estimated value to the business for each project. To do this, first develop a matrix based
   on a value index dimension and a risk index dimension. The value index includes the following criteria: principles compliance, which includes financial contribution, strategic alignment, and competitive position. The risk index includes the following criteria: size and complexity, technology, organizational capacity, and impact of a failure. Each of the criteria has an individual weight. The index and its criteria and weighting are developed and approved by senior management early in the project. It is important to establish the decision-making criteria before the options are known.

In addition, there will be key business drivers to be addressed that will also tend to dictate the sequence of implementation, such as:

• Reduction of costs
• Consolidation of services
• Ability to handle change
• A goal to have a minimum of “interim” solutions (they often become long-term / strategic!)

Another, possibly complementary, approach is for the individual projects or work packages to be group-sorted into a series of plateaus, each of which can be achieved in a realistic time scale.

The following description assumes a Target Architecture with only a single time horizon.

Inputs

Inputs to this phase are:

• Request for Architecture Work
• Statement of Architecture Work
• Business Architecture - Version 2
• Technology Architecture
• Impact Analysis - Project list

Steps

Key steps in this phase include:

1. Prioritize projects
2. Estimate resource requirements and availability
3. Perform cost / benefit assessment of the various migration projects
4. Perform risk assessment
5. Generate implementation roadmap (time-lined)
6. Document the Migration Plan

Outputs

The output of this phase is:

• Impact Analysis - Detailed Implementation and Migration Plan, including
  • Architecture Implementation Contract (if appropriate)

Copyright © The Open Group, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003