Cloud Migration Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for a cloud migration project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On a cloud migration project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a Cloud Migration project
Cloud Migration projects live or die on moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how cloud migration projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
Cloud Migration-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail cloud migration projects:
- Underestimated dependencies
- Downtime and data-loss risk
- Runaway cloud costs post-migration
Example
On a real cloud migration project, the lessons learned would be shaped by moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — underestimated dependencies, downtime and data-loss risk, runaway cloud costs post-migration — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.