03.04 - Scoping Topics: How long does it take? How long will I be unable to work?

03.04 - Scoping Topics: How long does it take? How long will I be unable to work?

This assumes the firm is doing a migration on Thursday per our recommendation.

How long does it take?

When firms ask how long a migration takes, what they usually are trying to ascertain is "how long will I be unable to work?".  It is important to clarify this distinction to client.

In terms of how long the migration takes, we recommend presenting this timeline to the firm:
Prep Time
  1. They get the migration workstation ready
  2. You review their data and build the playbook.
  3. There is no interruption to their operations.
  4. This usually lasts 1-2 weeks.
Migration Thursday
  1. At 3PM you start the migration and they stop adding to the old system.
Go-Live Friday
  1. On Friday at 9AM they start using the new system.

How long will I be unable to work?

If you follow our procedures, your client will never be unable to work.  There will only be a brief period of time when they will work differently.

You should inform the client on the following:
  1. When the migration starts on Thursday at 3PM:
    1. Stop saving data to the old system
    2. Save data to their desktop
    3. They can still view data in the old system.
    4. If they save anything to the old system once the migration starts, it will not be transferred.
  2. On Friday morning at 9AM:
    1. They can start working out of their new system.
    2. They should copy anything they saved to their desktop into the new system.
    3. The migration will still be in flight so they may need to reference their old system.
    4. If something isn't migrated right, they should not change it.  They should report it to you and you'll correct it.
    5. Nothing they add to the new system will get overwritten as part of the migration.
    6. If they need to work on a document that hasn't been transferred yet, that's fine.
      1. Open it from the old system, make any changes, but when you are done, save it to the new system.
      2. After the migration, there will be two copies of the document:
        1. The original edit that was part of the migration
        2. The new edit the firm member added
      3. The migration will never overwrite anything they have added.
  3. On Monday morning at 9AM:
    1. In nearly 100% of migrations, everything is fully transferred by 9AM on Monday morning.
    2. At this point in time, nobody should need to reference the old system any longer.


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