Insights
Migration Wave Planning: Reduce Cutover Risk With a Repeatable Playbook
Dependency mapping, readiness gates, and runbooks that keep schedules real.
Why migrations go sideways
Migrations fail when teams underestimate dependencies and overestimate readiness. Wave planning fixes this by turning “move the app” into a repeatable process with gates and rollback plans.
Wave planning in 6 steps
- Inventory: apps, data stores, integrations, owners, and constraints.
- Dependency map: what must move together, what can be decoupled.
- Wave grouping: group by risk and dependency, not org chart.
- Readiness gates: backups, monitoring, access, runbooks, and test coverage.
- Cutover plan: timeline, communications, change freeze, go/no-go criteria.
- Rollback plan: the plan you hope you never use.
Go/No‑Go checklist
- Observability in place (logs/metrics/alerts)
- Backups verified and restore tested
- Performance baseline captured
- Security exceptions documented
- Runbook validated with a rehearsal
Next steps
We can create your wave plan, readiness gates, and cutover runbooks—then execute migrations without weekend chaos.