Many organizations are using Sitecore old versions for which currently there is no support (e.g. Mainstream Support/Extended Support /Sustaining Support) from the Sitecore Product Team, and organizations ignores the Sitecore Upgrade to newer version due to various reasons and some are:
• Not having clear Sitecore Upgrade and Business strategy
• Impact of Sitecore License cost while maintaining old and new properties
• Due to Technical Debt, Business and IT Team not wanted to upgrade instead of re-write
• Due to increase demand from Business side and able to execute/maintain existing old Sitecore version with some patches without any severe issues
Sitecore Upgrade Articles:
Sitecore Upgrade Process
Sitecore Content Migration Using Sitecore Express Migration Tool
Sitecore Content Migration Using Sitecore Content Serialization Tool
Sitecore xDB Migration Using Sitecore xDB Data Migration Tool
To start with Sitecore Upgrade Process, we should have discussion with IT and Business on following high-level items:
• What is the need of Sitecore Upgrade?
• What are the existing issues?
• Are there any performance and security improvements in newer versions which impacting our Business and Maintenance of existing Sitecore implementation?
• What is the expectation from Sitecore Upgrade from Business side?
• Does Business envision any new functionalities after upgrade or Business wanted to enhance the application by introducing new functionalities in near future?
• Do you still have Sitecore Extended Support or Sustaining Support to run your application, and what’s the cost of this support?
• Are there any personalization or any digital market capabilities they are looking for
From IT Team point of view, upgrade to Sitecore 10.x provide following benefits to your organization:
• Leverage latest features of Sitecore platform
• Increased Security and Performance
• Sitecore Product which can fulfill your future needs e.g. use of AI/ML
• True Headless CMS capabilities
• Leverage Machine Learning using cortex
• Increased Scalability and Transaction Volume
• Extensible application
• Decouple the functionality
• Easily adaptable to future Sitecore functionalities and upgrades
• Simplify the operation of the overall infrastructure and with clear responsibilities
The Business and IT Team vision needs to be overlap so that the vision of both Business and IT Team needs to be validated so that teams focused and aligned on outcomes that matter to users:
When your organization or business decided to go with Sitecore upgrade from Sitecore lower version to Sitecore 10.x, then you can divide Sitecore Upgrade activities into following buckets:
• Scope of Upgrade
• Upgrade Path
• Team Identification
• Data Migration
• Application Upgrade
• Testing
• Deployment
• Post Upgrade Steps
Now we can move to detailed understanding of Sitecore Upgrade Process:
• Scope of Upgrade:
The initial starting point of any upgrade is scope. It means what are the existing functionalities will be part of scope. Most of the organization will start with minimum viable product (MVP) which defined as a vision of application and later we can enhance with rest of the functionalities phase wise. With this approach you can observe end-user behavior towards the new product/application.
In this phase, we also need to consider Budget allocated for the project, team strength who can execute this task and deliverables. If current team strength not having bandwidth to execute this task, then think about the Vendor engagement who can execute this task on your behalf.
• Upgrade Path:
In any case where you are executing the project with internal team members or with vendor help, you must define the high-level plan in terms of how to proceed:
Team Preparation > Team Engagement > Team On-boarding > Design Discussion > Upgrade Approach > Build Start > UAT Sign-Off > Go-Live > Transition
• Team Identification:
Many people in software industry or even in every industry generally refer person also as RESOURCES which I don’t like because RESOURCES are in-tangible and whereas person are tangibles because they can touch and feel. In this case don’t call your team members as resources 🙏.
The team members are most important assets of any application development, so we need to always create the balanced team with proper time allocation to make your project successful. Also consider the project overall cost while selecting the level/time-frame for the team members.
In the upcoming blog posts, I will try to explain the above activities in detail which can help you in Sitecore Upgrade Process.
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