4 Tips for Aligning your Team to Ensure a Smooth Cloud Migration

Employees need training and support to be useful when new technology is implemented. Unfortunately, these employees don’t necessarily receive the support they need. 47% of digital workers struggle to find the information they need to effectively use business applications and other tools in the workplace, according to 2023 industry research from Gartner. This disconnect can have disastrous consequences for major technology investments like cloud migration. At the same time, organizations can work proactively to close this support gap by properly aligning and preparing their team for pending digital transformation. Everyone in the organization, from the C-Suite to “boots on the ground” worker bees, ideally should fully buy into the project and align around its goals and priorities. Let’s explore four tips for aligning your team during a cloud migration to ensure a successful outcome:

1. Get all decision-makers to agree to a single path forward: For a technology upgrade as encompassing as the cloud, everyone has their own ideas of what this change could and should become for the organization. Very quickly, different stakeholders can introduce scope creep that causes the project to lose focus, leading to cost overruns and missed deadlines. The key is to get all decision-makers to agree at the upfront on a single path forward. The organization needs a shared strategy and vision for how the cloud will be used (or won’t be used), both over the short and long term. Significantly, the vision and the strategy behind this project should be shaped by hard data, not by individual decision-maker's gut instinct – in other words, data-driven decision-making.
2. Ensure every team member gets connected to training and coaching: There are numerous stakeholders for cloud migration, including operations engineers, developers, and many business end users, from finance to marketing to HR. All of these stakeholders need to be educated about the cloud; the goal is for every team member to understand the strategic value and benefits of migrating to the cloud. This education should take place through tailored training and coaching opportunities. Experienced mentors should work directly alongside stakeholders at every stage of implementation, helping to bring every team member up to speed and identify where there are persistent knowledge gaps and where specialized training is needed. For example, business teams likely will need training on finances and analytics services that are available via the cloud. Meanwhile, technical teams likely will need specific certifications and training in how to conduct specific testing and troubleshooting.
3. Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence: A Cloud Center of Excellence is a group of individuals representing all business groups across the organization that help guide and steer a cloud project. This cross-functional group should encompass individuals from a range of backgrounds, including cloud architects, finance, engineers, product development, and legal. Because these team members come from diverse backgrounds, they’re able to effectively strategize together and troubleshoot just about any issue that arises, ensuring the cloud migration stays on track and aligned with the organization’s overall goals. Moreover, once the cloud migration is complete, the Cloud Center of Excellence helps publicize and promote the organization’s cloud strategy among the platform’s many end users.
4. Foster a culture of continuous improvement: The cloud is a living, breathing tool, and every stakeholder needs to feel empowered to help it grow and evolve in effective new ways. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by fostering a culture of continuous improvement, where every team member knows that innovation is highly prized and that their contributions and ideas are welcome. When teams stay engaged, they stay aligned – and that keeps them working in lockstep toward transformational change.

The most effective way for stakeholders to help ensure a smooth cloud migration is to align around a shared vision and strategy. All decision-makers need to agree on a single path forward, team members need to be connected to training and coaching, a Cloud Center of Excellence needs to be established, and a culture of continuous improvement needs to be created.

To learn more about how to align your cloud migration team around a common vision and strategy, download our latest eBook, “Assessing the Maturity of Your Cloud Strategy” or watch Part 1 of our Cloud Migration On-Demand Webinar Series. And for more personalized support and guidance, please reach out to our cloud migration experts.