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Case Study: Data Services Migration to Atlassian Cloud
February 7, 2022
<p>What do you do when the rockstar server admin on your team accepts a promotion in a different division? That one person who managed the server like it was their baby: knowing when it was acting up, which addons it can handle — and which it can’t — and what needed to be done to coax it back online when the server went down. Again. For a local public sector team, the answer was to sunset their on-prem and switch to a solution in the cloud. </p>
<p>In early 2021, the DataBC team shared a request for a local provider to migrate their existing on-premise Jira server to the Atlassian Cloud. They wanted a solution that would mitigate the effort required to perform manual inbox triaging, with the ability to easily receive, track, manage, and resolve requests from their clients: other public servants as well as the general public. Following a formal proposal process, DataBC awarded the project to Highway Three Solutions due to the response package they created: it met the required deliverables, within the requested timeline, from a team with the experience and knowledge required to make the transition as smooth as possible. </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="processes-for-perfection">Processes for Perfection </h3>
<p>To ensure the cloud migration process was completed effectively and efficiently, Highway Three followed a defined process: </p>
<p><strong>Assessment</strong> – For this project, the client had determined the cloud was the right tool for them, so Highway Three helped them choose the right plan for their office, with a strategy to navigate the cloud-based authentication mechanism and security management. </p>
<p><strong>Planning</strong> – Highway Three developed a multi-phase migration plan to minimize the impact on the various teams involved, factoring in the time required for each task, assigning a professional to oversee it, and documenting the process from start to finish. </p>
<p><strong>Preparation</strong> – The team looked at the various plugins and configurations required to ensure the client’s teams could access the tools they needed following the migration. </p>
<p><strong>Testing</strong> – Prior to migration, H3 extensively tested the DataBC system to ensure an essentially trouble-free experience for the end-users. Several test migrations helped identify concerns before they became problems. </p>
<p><strong>Migration</strong> – This is where the magic happens, moving the on-prem server data and associated attachments and projects to the cloud safely and comprehensively. </p>
<p><strong>Go-Live Launch</strong> – Once the system was configured and tested to ensure it was operating as desired, H3 scheduled the go-live date to put the DataBC team back in the driver’s seat. </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="hands-on-experience">Hands-On Experience </h3>
<p>Highway Three used <a href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/cloud-migration-hub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Atlassian Cloud</strong></a> to manage the migration, leveraging the powerful epics feature of <a href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/products/jira" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Jira</strong></a> to create hierarchical user stories; <a href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/products/confluence" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Confluence</strong></a> to house planning documents and project requirements; and an instance of <a href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/products/jira-service-management" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Jira Service Management</strong></a> to facilitate feedback and bug reports from all the teams being migrated. </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="looking-back-to-move-forward">Looking Back to Move Forward </h3>
<p>As this project was broken down into three different phases to migrate DataBC’s ten agile teams with minimal disruption, Highway Three took a retrospective approach to refine each migration: using learnings from the previous instance to inform and improve the next. This iterative approach eliminated most of the bugs before the move, with the final migration being completed essentially bug-free, with little — if any — downtime. </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="security-strategy">Security Strategy </h3>
<p>In a cloud-server environment, security plays a vital role. To help the client create and maintain a more secure environment, Highway Three organized a comprehensive security cleanup and documented a best-practices onboarding process in Confluence, including a three-step how-to, making it easier for their team to onboard users quickly and effectively. </p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="delivering-the-learning">Delivering the Learning</h3>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"><p>With the cloud version of Jira, we don’t have to worry about the service being down or assigning someone to implement future versions. Instead, our teams can focus on using the software the way it was intended: managing projects, running sprints, and facilitating our version of agile.</p><cite>Team Lead, Business Analysis & Project Management, Data Services </cite></blockquote>
<p>As the DataBC team was already comfortable with Jira, they didn’t require the typical training offered when migrating from server to cloud, so the H3 team was able to show some advanced use cases, tools, and advice and guidance to ease the migration of the experienced users from the on-prem server to their new cloud environment. These workshops, like most of the Highway Three training sessions, were recorded to ensure the information is available for review as needed and accessible for future team members as they join the crew. </p>
<p>For teams new to Jira, the H3 training typically covers the topics and challenges the users might encounter, such as the differences between navigation and profile management, with tips and shortcuts that most clients love to use because they make their lives much easier. </p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="post-migration-support">Post-Migration Support </h2>
<p>While it might seem that a cloud migration is a one-and-done experience, Highway Three has found that following a migration, there are opportunities to improve your processes and reconsider how much energy is being spent to manage your Jira instance. By completing team-by-team mini-workshops, the H3 team can evaluate how the organization is using Jira and how it’s working from a technical perspective, followed by recommendations about what can be done to improve performance and productivity. These mini-workshops are a great way to share Jira best practices and tips’n tricks the Highway Three team has discovered or created over the years. </p>
<p><strong>Managed services and professional support with an ongoing relationship from an experienced partner, like Highway Three, can provide answers to questions, offer recommendations, and make configuration changes as needed. </strong> </p>
<p><strong>If you’d like to improve productivity, speed, and performance for your team, download this whitepaper to learn the </strong><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/news/5-reasons-to-move-to-jira-cloud" target="_blank"><strong>Top 5 Reasons to Move to Jira Cloud</strong></a> </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="challenges">Challenges</h3>
<ul><li>On-prem server was multiple versions behind current </li><li>Excessive staff-time was required to maintain the on-prem server </li><li>Substantial knowledge was housed in a single resource – who took a promotion with another team</li></ul>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="solutions">Solutions</h3>
<ul><li>Automatic roll-out of new versions and functionality available in the cloud </li><li>Managed and monitored hosting allows clients and users to focus on their customers, not the software </li><li>Documented processes housed in Confluence provide an easy to maintain knowledge repository </li></ul>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="results">Results</h2>
<ul><li>Server-uptime is a non-issue now </li><li>No concern about upgrading to future versions of Jira </li><li>Teams are able to focus on using the software for its intended purpose: managing projects and sprints </li><li>A stable and reliable solution that gives the DataBC team confidence in the tools they use on a daily basis </li></ul>
