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Once the (1) discovery and assessment outcomes and(2) migration design was finalized, the next challenge was orchestrating people, timelines, and communications to ensure every wave executed smoothly.
Planning Phase: Orchestrating Schedules and Communications
Objective: Translate the design into a work plan and schedule and prepare all participants (IT teams and end-users) for execution. Planning covers project management rigor – detailed timeline, task ownership, and robust communication.
Approach: We developed a comprehensive project plan mapping tasks week-by-week. This included setting the exact dates for each migration wave (as per design) and backward planning all preparatory activities. For example, if Wave 1 cutover was August 22, we worked out interim milestones: laptops for Wave 1 users shipped by early August, initial data sync starts August 4, UAT window August 18–22, etc. We created a Gantt chart of these events and aligned them with resource assignments (which team member or stakeholder was responsible for each). Parallel tracks (Exchange, OneDrive, and Teams migrations) were coordinated to converge at cutover weekends.
A major focus of planning was communication & change management. We created a detailed Communication Plan that scheduled user-facing messages at key intervals. Each wave’s users would receive a series of emails: an initial T-minus 14-day notice with preparation steps, a 7-day reminder, a 1-day reminder, and then post-migration instructions. For instance, two weeks before cutover, users got an email outlining what to do to prepare (e.g. “decrypt any sensitive emails, check in all SharePoint files, update your email signature to announce your new address”). These communications were drafted in collaboration with the acquiring organization’s Communications team to ensure tone and branding were appropriate, but the project team provided the content (leveraging a lot of Q&A from our Migration FAQ document.)
We also planned multiple training and support touchpoints: live “town hall” webinars for users before each wave to walk through what to expect, hands-on UAT support sessions during the week they test their new accounts, and a standing daily Hypercare call post-cutover. We set up a dedicated migration support email hotline and made sure ServiceNow would route migration issues to our team during Hypercare.
On the stakeholder side, the plan established a governance cadence: weekly core team meetings to track progress and issues, and Steering Committee meetings every two weeks with executive sponsors to report status. We utilized the weekly status reports to communicate progress; these reports flagged any deviations and decisions needed. For example, when we saw during Wave 1 that more users wanted to join later waves (due to vacation schedules), we captured that in status reports and adjusted Wave rosters with stakeholder agreement.
Stakeholder Management: Planning is where all stakeholders see the migration coming to life, so managing expectations and commitments is critical. We negotiated and documented freeze periods with stakeholders. Also, we had to coordinate with the client’s device deployment team (since they were shipping laptops). Early in planning, that team wasn’t fully looped in; we quickly brought them into our meetings and integrated laptop shipment status into our plan. This cross-team alignment was facilitated by a senior client IT manager who acted as the exec sponsor ensuring each internal team supported the migration schedule.
The plan also had a contingency section. Stakeholders were briefed on what plan B would be if something went awry – for instance, if we encountered a showstopper issue during a wave’s cutover, we might have to back out that wave and reschedule. We defined “go/no-go” checkpoints before each cutover where all parties and our team would formally decide to proceed or delay, depending on readiness and any outstanding issues.
Outcome: We emerged with a master project schedule and a fully informed stakeholder community. Everyone knew who needed to do what and when. Some tangible outputs of the planning phase:
- A Wave Allocation list finalizing which users moved in which weekend (taking into account business units and individual scheduling conflicts).
- The approved Communication Package: email templates, FAQ site, internal announcements, and even helpdesk scripts for common questions.
- Runbooks for each cutover weekend, down to the hour – listing tasks, with owners attached to each step.
- Hypercare plan: a roster of support personnel and escalation contacts for the week following each migration, and a procedure for tracking and reporting issues daily.
By planning in this level of detail and securing stakeholder sign-offs, the execution phase was set up to be proactive rather than reactive.
Lesson: Plan, communicate, and then communicate some more. In an enterprise migration, you can’t over-prepare or over-communicate. A solid plan with management buy-in means fewer surprises. Also, coordinate related workstreams (like device rollouts, licensing, network changes) by integrating them into your plan – an M&A integration is a multi-headed effort, and the migration plan often becomes the central project plan for many teams. Finally, clear end-user comms and training are as important as the technical tasks; they turn a potentially disruptive IT project into a smoother change management experience.
With detailed planning, communications, and governance in place, the migration was ready to move from preparation to execution—putting the plan into action wave by wave. Stay tuned!