Updating your SharePoint
environment between versions or from on-premises to SharePoint Online is a
reality for many organizations. It’s not just the version or location to
consider, its’ the content too. As you
migrate between versions, there is an opportunity to define or refine your
current and historical content to make the end user experience better, enhance
search results and apply governance policies.
I recently completed a content
migration and offer the following guidance around the themes of test, estimate,
evaluate and plan for exceptions.
Test
Let’s begin by selecting a
specific quantity of items for a test migration and determine the following three
items:
- How much time did it take to migrate the
quantity of items you selected?
- Did your content map successfully from source to
target destinations?
- How many exceptions did you encounter in this
test migration?
Estimate
Time is a crucial element for
migrations. Time means money, resources and impact to end users. Starting with
100 items, my selected quantity for a test migration, take a look at your
migration tool log file to determine the elapsed time to complete the test
migration. Use this as a baseline time estimate for creating the total
migration estimate, excluding handling exceptions. For example, if the elapsed
time is two hours for 100 items and you have a total of 10,000 items to migrate
– the migration estimate is:
10,000 items / 100 (100-item
batches) = 100 batches
100 batches x 2 hours each = 200 hours
To complete the migration in a
week, you’ll need to consider how many team members are migrating content and
when the work will be completed. Using 200 hours as a guide, with five team
members migrating for 40 hours each, this migration may be completed in five
days. (Five migrators /200 hours = 40 hours per migration team member).
Evaluate
Evaluate those first 100 items –
how accurate was the migration? How did you do? Did the migration process
deposit items into their target destination? What is the metadata? Do you see
created by, last modified dates? How about new content types or terms, did they
apply as intended?
The test migration is the best time
to thoroughly evaluate if items migrated as intended. Invest the time now to
prevent additional time for exception handling as well as re-running migration
segments later. Spending more time up front means less time as you conclude the
migration process.
If the test migration falls short
of expectations, make the necessary adjustments and re-run it to refresh the
baseline time estimate.
Plan for Exceptions
No matter how well you plan there
will be exceptions in a migration process. For whatever reason, the tool has a
hard time reading or finding the source document, so it skips it and lists it
as a failure.
If team members stop for each
batch file and deal with exceptions, the migration process will take longer
than the estimated 200 hours potentially infringing upon budget, timeline and
end user expectations. I advise you run the migration, and deal with the
exceptions at the end or alternately assign one team member to work exclusively
on exceptions. Focus on the big picture, completing the migration within the
established timeline, and following up with the minority of items in a separate
exception handling process.
For estimating purposes on the
200 hour migration, a safe bet is to establish an expectation to spend up to
15% of time working through exceptions. On this 200 hour migration, that yields
an additional 30 hours for exception handling. (200 hours X 15% = 30 hours). You
may wish to round up to 40 hours, the allocation for one full time exception
handling resource for one week, the same timeline as your planned migration.
Leveraging the four themes of
testing, estimating, evaluating and planning for exceptions will help you
execute a successful migration.
Need help planning your SharePoint Migration or Upgrade? Take a look at our SharePoint Pre-Migration Assessment offering.
About Nora Ten Broeck, PMP,
MOS: SharePoint 2013: Nora is a SharePoint enthusiast with interests
in engagement management, improved business processes and Nintex. Follow her
@NoraTenBroeck