Website Migration Project



Website Migration Project

Introduction

This paper, gives an overview of the steps involved in an enterprise Web server migration project, from creating a vision statement that defines the desired outcome of the project, to troubleshooting any problems that arise following deployment. In this article, I take a topical approach to migration project planning. And to help get started with planning, I provide a number of forms and checklists, as well as sample documents and templates that can be downloaded from this Web site and use (Sanderson, 2009). The paper covers the most salient aspects of migration planning, it is outside the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive discussion of project planning (Sanderson, 2009).

Without sufficient planning, it is more likely to overlook important steps or fail to prevent situations that would have foreseen during the planning process. As a result, vital systems can become unavailable and day-to-day business operations can be disrupted and revenues lost. With careful planning, however, the new system can meet or even exceed expectations with minimal disruptions, and greatly enhance business.

Completing the Tasks of the Envisioning Phase

As discussed in last month's article, "Understanding the Migration Process ," the Envisioning phase is the first step in the migration process. This is when the project team defines the desired outcome for the project in the form of a vision statement and requirements definition, and identifies its scope in terms of time and resource constraints. Before starting the formal process of project planning, it need to complete the activities of this phase, culminating in the creation of a Vision and Scope document. To help write a Vision and Scope document, One can use the "Vision and Scope Template” available to download from this Web site (Sanderson, 2009).

Vision Statement

A team should have a clearly defined vision statement, such as the following statement for a fictitious company, Contoso Pharmaceuticals:

Contoso Pharmaceuticals will replace its current UNIX Apache Web server environment with Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and IIS 5.0, a more efficient and flexible solution that will maximize competitiveness in our industry while reducing operational and administrative costs. The company will implement a global Windows 2000 Server domain model and will begin a scheduled deployment program by the third quarter of 1999. It will start an enterprise-wide rollout within three months and will be user-complete within 18 months, or the first quarter of 2001.

Implementation will require a conversion and coexistence infrastructure in order to seamlessly egrate the new platform. To accomplish this, the company will use Windows 2000 Server integration tools and third-party UNIX conversion tools (Roche, 2009).

Project Requirements

The project team should clearly define project requirements in the Vision and Scope document, prior to beginning formal planning. The following table lists some typical requirements for a Web services migration project (Roche, 2009).

Migration Project Requirements and Deliverables

Requirement

Deliverable

Improve information sharing

Integrate the corporate intranet with Microsoft tools and technologies. IIS 5.0 fully integrates with other Microsoft business products, such as Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Excel, and Microsoft® SQL Server. In addition, IIS ...