Once the decision has been made to transition from your current service management, change, or release management platform, the success of your migration strategy becomes paramount. The key to making progress lies in understanding the underlying reasons for the move, rather than just addressing surface issues.
When clients reach out to Sentify for assistance with migrating to Atlassian JSM, it’s often due to issues plaguing their current platform, including:
- Difficulty in making seamless changes to the existing platform.
- The need to expand user access and the accompanying cost escalation.
- Subpar service levels or priority from platform partners.
- The platform’s inability to fulfil the business’s feature requirements.
- Insufficient integrations or high customization costs.
Once a tipping point is reached—typically when a culmination of challenges becomes overwhelming — organizations start seeking a new solution to resolve these problems. How can I smoothly migrate my data from ServiceNow, BMC, or SolarWinds to Jira? They inquire, “Do you offer a tool for facilitating migration?”
Our response is straightforward: “No.”
Our experience has revealed that the driving factors behind the migration decision are often a blend of inadequate configuration, data management, user controls, and intricate permissions and workflows. However, underlying this complexity or inability to move forward with the current platform are years of added controls stemming from past production failures or a fear of failure. As trust diminishes, more checkpoints and governance are introduced. Occasionally, we uncover other root causes, such as overzealous administrators introducing automation and customization into the platform just because they can. This leaves new personnel baffled when attempting to comprehend the system’s architecture. Teams become immobilized, fearing that any changes might disrupt crucial workflows for end users. Migrating is a significant choice, but when that tipping point is reached, a change in mindset—a complete reset—is what’s truly required. Before switching tools, your governance and operations stakeholders need to undergo a shift in perspective.
Numerous questions should be contemplated when embarking on a migration and estimating the necessary investment:
- Is management open to altering its governance approach, fostering trust, and relinquishing control?
- Are they willing to allocate time and resources to teams to explore new methods and learn from errors?
- Is the configuration team prepared to begin anew, searching for smarter, simpler methods of administration? Can they accept feedback on basic workflows and iteratively enhance them?
- Are the on-ground teams open to experimenting with novel approaches and learning from successes and failures?
If any of these questions receive an affirmative response, a greenfield approach may prove to be the most effective migration strategy. Alternatively, gradual changes can be adopted if yourorganization leans toward a more cautious route. A plan that empowers your teams to envision their ideal processes and enact a series of incremental improvements can be pursued.
Furthermore, as an Atlassian Solution Partner, we can collaborate closely with your organization, offering insights into effective strategies, pitfalls to avoid, and ways to enhance your implementation plan to better align with your requirements. Your responses to the aforementioned questions will help gauge the potential pace of your migration—or whether it aligns with your initial objectives at all.
In general, we recommend not clinging to outdated systems. A greenfield iterative approach to JSM is often optimal, delivering a low-risk path to propel your organization in the right direction.
Visualizing outcomes and establishing alignment among stakeholders through a simplified approach while soliciting input from all parties will set your migration off to a promising start.
Regardless of your motivations, the time has likely come to bid farewell to legacy systems and allow Sentify to assist you in embarking on a fresh journey with JSM. As a Platinum Solution Partner, we stand ready to guide you in the right direction from the outset.
