Start Here: Migration Planning Guidelines
A General Migrating Planning Guide for Moving to SellStack: preparations, careful planning and execution to ensure minimal disruption to your business operations and streamlined successful completion.
For most engineers and project managers this will be very familiar, most will have even more than this guide in their heads from experience. This is not intended as a complete nor comprehensive list, but it is a solid starting point for kicking off your planning to move to SellStack.
Our SellStack team will work with you to tailor this planning framework to your unique situation to ensure a well though out and tested move; to keep disruptions minimal and sanity intact.
1. Preliminary Analysis and Requirement Gathering
- Objective: Understand the current platform's scope, including catalogue size, custom functionalities, integrations, and business requirements.
- Activities:
- Conduct an inventory of features, products, customer data, and third-party integrations used on the legacy platform. Key areas include:
- primary sources of truth
- will there be a PIM (Product Information Management) platform or will SellStack act as the PIM?
- currently used product data model; is it well structured or more optimally changed in the migration process?
- Define migration objectives, timelines, and KPIs. Key areas include:
- determine what data will move to SellStack
- customers; will passwords need to move as well or will they be "reset"?
- order history
- customer reviews
- rewards points
- newsletter subscriptions
- content: enriched products, website and marketing presentation
- determine what data will move to SellStack
- Conduct an inventory of features, products, customer data, and third-party integrations used on the legacy platform. Key areas include:
2. SellStack Compliance Evaluation and Setup
- Objective: Ensure the changes required for the source data and functionality to meet all identified business and technical requirements within SellStack.
- Activities:
- Assess potential gaps between data and functional models in source legacy platform with SellStack's; identifying key areas for conversion or reimagining.
- Initialize SellStack testing instance environment for development purposes.
3. Data Migration Planning
- Objective: Following step 1, create a comprehensive plan for migration of data.
- Activities:
- Map out data migration paths and necessary transformations.
- Identify data models/structures that are better transitioned to a new method or model within SellStack
- Select and create appropriate migration tools or develop custom migration scripts.
4. Identify and Plan Custom Elements for Development and Integration
- Objective: Recreate custom functionalities and ensure any new or unsupported/custom third-party platforms are integrated.
- Activities:
- Are there special and specific functionalities in the source legacy platform?
- Identify required custom/unique features and plugins not available with SellStack
- Integrate with third-party platforms
- ERPs
- payment gateways
- shipping providers
- compliance platforms (tax, regulatory)
- Are there special and specific functionalities in the source legacy platform?
5. Theme, User Experience (UX), and Admin Experience (AX) Design
- Objective: Develop or enhance the user interface that aligns with the brand and offers a superior user experience for customers, partners, as well as staff.
- Activities:
- Select or design a front-facing theme for the target platform.
- Identify new or custom admin-facing requirements
- reporting
- new management screens
- notifications or alerts
- modifications to customer, orders screens
- state management
- Customize the user interface to meet branding and UX requirements.
6. Data Migration Execution
- Objective: Migrate all required data from the source legacy platform to SellStack.
- Activities:
- Rehearsal: test, test, test - conduct a pilot data migration to identify and address potential issues.
- Pre-Launch: migrate items that can be moved in advance, this lessens the burden (read: stress) on GoLive day
7. Quality Assurance and Testing
- Objective: Verify that the new platform operates correctly and fulfills all specified requirements.
- Activities:
- Perform extensive testing, including functional, performance, security, and user acceptance testing (UAT).
- Resolve any issues discovered during post-launch testing.
- Re-test: rinse, lather, repeat
8. Training and Documentation
- Objective: Prepare the team for managing and utilizing the new platform effectively.
- Note: Most training happens in advance and continues into production operations post GoLive
- Activities:
- Present and Update (or create where custom functionality applies) operational documentation.
- Provide training sessions for team members and related stakeholders.
9. Launch Preparation
- Objective: Ensure a seamless transition to SellStack.
- Activities:
- Plan the launch strategy, including timing and communication plans with stakeholders.
- Recommend for business to develop marketing and customer communication plans to manage expectations.
10. GoLive and Post-Launch Support
- Objective: Transition successfully to the target platform and provide ongoing support.
- Activities:
- GoLive! Execute complete data migration of time-sensitive data, ensuring data integrity and minimizing downtime.
- Monitor the system closely post-launch to quickly address any issues.
- recommended tests of mission critical systems (payments, ERP/POS integrations, finance etc)
- Collect post-launch items requiring time-sensitive tweaks (usually this is minimal)
- Collect feedback for future improvements.
- Establish a routine for ongoing maintenance and updates: generally planned in advance
This plan should be tailored to fit the specific needs and circumstances of your business. Regular communication with all stakeholders and careful project management throughout the process will be key to a successful migration.