[Deliverable: Whitepaper, AWS Service, 2 blog posts, AWS Documentation,].
This is one of the important projects I created, led, and delivered.
Here is the story of the Migration Lens.
At AWS, there is something called TFC (Technical Field Community) that consists of experts in different domains. For example, there are Migration TFCs, Networking TFC, AI TFC, etc.
In 2023, I was part of the leadership team of the Migration and Modernization TFC. As I was digging into some data to find out the most needed or frequently encountered issues by customers, I found that a significant percentage of the requests coming to the TFC were about questions related to implementing specific best practices in migration projects.
Most of the questions could be categorized under this category:
How do I make sure my migration project follows AWS best practices?
It seemed like an opportunity to fill this gap, especially because there was no comprehensive content available online covering end-to-end migration projects, from securing executive sponsorship to discovery to building the landing zone on AWS, to migrating and then modernizing applications on AWS.
In Amazon fashion, to start a project, you need to write a two-pager and go through several iterations with leaders and stakeholders to secure sponsorship. In a few weeks, I secured leadership support across multiple teams and was given the OK to build the team to create what we call the Migration Lens.
The Migration Lens is a collection of best practices that extend the original, well-known Well-Architected Framework but specifically addresses best practices across the three phases of migration (assess, mobilize, migrate) and intersects them with the six pillars of the Well-Architected Framework. So, there were 18 areas to address
I built and led a team of about 30 SMEs across all areas, and we started defining the structure of how the content should look. It took us about 10 months to build it and clear all the review requirements and bar-raising from different experts.
The package I built included the following:
Content
AWS Service
Training and Enablement
- Internal Only – A wiki with all the training material to train AWS migration specialists on how to deliver the migration review to their customers.
Reporting
- Internal Only – To measure the risk remediation.
SO WHAT?
- The whitepaper has been reviewed about 30k times as per the date of this blog
- has been used to improve the migration of a number of strategic customers that I can’t disclose here.
- and is being referenced by many of my colleagues and AWS partners to improve customers’ migrations to AWS.
Check my LinkedIn Post for more context
What People Say About It
Jeff Kratz (VP WW Publci Sector, AWS)
Donilo Poccia (Chief Evangelist, AWS)
Community and Partners
- https://www.infoq.com/news/2024/01/well-architected-migration-lens/
- https://expertcloudconsulting.com/blog/aws-well-architected-migration-lens
- https://aragoncloud.bbtvnewmedia.com/announcing-the-aws-well-architected-migration-lens-93553be9a615