Steps to plan and perform AEM upgrade – Part 4

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Step 11: Train all stakeholders to get them ready

Training is an often overlooked aspect of migration. Make sure you do not miss this important step and cover the training for all the stakeholders, including

• Business team who use AEM day to day for authoring and publishing
• Developers and the support team who customize, fix issues that arise and build new features
• Administrators and the operations team who maintain and manage the environments

The training could even be a self-training where the stakeholders explore the newer version on their own with the aid of documentation or video training materials available. Or it could be a classroom training conducted by a professional services team.

Whatever be the mode of training, make sure to cover this important step. This helps to bring every one on-board and get them excited about the new version you would soon be switching to.

Step 12: Finalize the date(s) for performing the migration

You might have had a target period for completing the migration even before the start of this migration exercise. 

One of your stated objectives could be say ‘the migration has to be completed before the end of the mentioned year / quarter” or “before the beginning of a peak season”.

But as you complete your preparation and testing and are nearing the final migration, it is very critical to fix specific dates during which you will carry out the migration.

If your scenario involves putting an authoring freeze during the period of migration, finalize the authoring freeze period. You may want to bring down the web server or disable the gateway to the authoring instance during this period to avoid accidental changes to the content.

Take care to choose a non-peak day and off peak hours to run the final migration impacting end customers. Inform all stakeholders, and declare your downtimes if needed. Plan to bring up your application maintenance page during this period.

Step 13: Socialize your fallback options

Things do go wrong and unexpected does happen at times. Keep all stakeholders appraised of the various fallback options you have in place.

Especially keep all the key decision makers informed so that an informed decision can be taken quickly, if something goes wrong during the execution.

By now you have covered all bases, prepared and fully ready for the final migration. The final part of this series has the steps for the final migration run.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5