Step 1. Understand your Strategy

The first step is understanding your strategy, so start with the fundamentals. Please take your time to do this step thoroughly because you want to know where you stand today and where to go. For example, your management might proclaim: "We want to become a cloud-first organization by 2025." From this simple sentence, you need to understand:

• What does "we" refer to?
  • Is it the entire organization or just a couple of operating companies?
• "Cloud First" what does that mean?
  • Do you have any KPIs?
  • How do you define reaching cloud-first?
• What does 2025 mean?
  • Is that a hard deadline?
  • On which day of the year?

As you can see, you need to understand your strategy correctly. Understanding the plan will help you in your transformation journey, especially if your organization has an extensive application portfolio. Additionally, you need to understand dependencies such as multiple cloud initiatives or limiting cloud usage to one provider.

Next Step

Resources

Author and expert: Sandro Recknagel, Senior Consultant at LeanIX (Professional Services)

Academy course: Section 3B - Cloud Migration Course (only available for LeanIX customers and partners)