Get Started: Create a Cloud Adoption Team - Cloud Adoption Framework (2023)

Companies use cloud adoption as a method to increase the flexibility of their services while reducing costs and risks. Businesses do this by using cloud computing, which allows them to store, manage, and process vast amounts of data on remote computers hosted on the Internet.

Cloud adoption teams are the modern equivalent of technical implementation teams or project teams. The nature of the cloud may require more fluid team structures.

Some cloud adoption teams focus exclusively on moving to the cloud and others focus on innovations that leverage cloud technologies. Some teams include the deep technical expertise needed to complete large adoption efforts, such as a full data center migration, and others have a narrower technical focus.

A smaller team can move between projects to achieve specific goals. For example, a team of data platform specialists might focus on helping convert SQL database virtual machines (VMs) to SQL PaaS instances.

As cloud adoption expands, customers benefit from a team dedicated tocloud platform function. This team uses automated deployment and code reuse to accelerate successful adoption. Individuals focused on a cloud platform role can implement infrastructure, application standards, governance, and other supporting assets to drive greater efficiency and consistency and instill cloud principles in their organization. Small organizations and small adoption teams cannot afford a dedicated cloud platform team. We recommend that you establish an automation resource in your adoption team to begin building this important cloud muscle.

Step 1 – Determine the type of adoption team you need

Cloud adoption teams tend to do one or more of the following types of adoption:

• Migration of existing workloads
• Modernization of existing workloads and assets
• Architecture change for existing workloads and assets
• Development of new workloads.

Adoption of any IT portfolio will likely require a combination of these types of efforts. Unfortunately, each type requires different skills and mindsets. The more specialized an adoption team is, the more effective and efficient it will be at doing this type of work. On the other hand, mastering all the deployment options in cloud adoption can be overwhelming for these more specialized teams.

When building a cloud adoption team for the first time, aligning with one of the adoption methodologies will help accelerate the development of the team's collective skills.

Deliverables:

• Determine if the team aligns better with the Migrate or Innovate methodology.
• Each methodology has a four-step onboarding experience to help the team understand the tools and processes needed to be really good at this endeavor. Invest time as a team in the early steps to understand what tools and scenarios you are likely to need in early iterations.
• Align responsibilities between teams by developing a cross-team matrix that identifiesaccountable, accountable, consulted and informed (RACI)parties. Update your companyRACI Modelsto help others understand who is on the team and what methodology the team will focus on.

Guidance to support delivery completion:

• Overview of the migration methodologydescribes the process, tools, and approaches for migrating and modernizing a portfolio of workloads.
• Overview of the Innovate methodologydescribes the process, tools, and approaches for adding cloud-native workloads to the portfolio.
• Understand the motivationsbehind that effort to see if they are more aligned with migration or innovation efforts.

Step 2 – Align your team with other support teams

If your company's cloud adoption effort is mature enough to have support teams, you can find a list of the teams and subject matter experts in your company's version ofRACI Models, including cloud governance, cloud operations, a cloud center of excellence, or other similar teams.

Deliverables:

• Review the design guide, operational baselines, policies, and processes of the various support teams to understand the security measures that have been put in place to guide cloud adoption.
• Review the guide with other cloud adoption teams to understand any limitations you may encounter as a result of these security measures.

Guidance to support delivery completion:

• Evaluate corporate policydescribes the steps for establishing a corporate policy, which can limit the decisions that staff can safely make in the company's cloud environment.
• government disciplinesdescribes the types of controls or disciplined processes the governance team is likely to have in place to enable secure and compliant cloud adoption.
• omanage methodologydescribes the considerations that go into a cloud operations baseline to provide basic operations management.

Step 3: Begin your adoption journey

Depending on the type of adoption team you're part of, you'll start with one of these guides:

• Getting started: migrating workloads to the cloud
• Start: create new products or services

These guides provide guidance for the various teams listed along with their various degrees of responsibility and responsibility. Use the guides to understand how your equipment fits into the rest of the trip. Also use them to understand the levels of support you can expect from across the company.

Ultimately, the cloud adoption team is responsible for meeting assigned migration efforts or new product development. While support teams are responsible for ensuring that each step is completed, it is the responsibility of each cloud adoption team to ensure that the support team receives the support they need to be successful. If the responsible team does not yet exist or needs further support to meet their responsible steps, the adoption team is encouraged to partner with other teams to complete their deliverables.

Deliverables:

• Get better and better at sticking to the methodology associated with your adoption approach.
• Support other teams in completing their responsible steps, even if those steps are hindering your adoption efforts.

Guidance to support delivery completion:

• In the getting started with migration guide, the adoption team is responsible for deliveringStep 10: Migrate your first workload.
• In the new product introduction guide, the adoption team is responsible for deliveringstep 8: innovate in the cloud.

All the other steps in these checklists are designed to make the effort more manageable.

Step 4: Extend your skills with scenarios and best practices

After an iteration or two, the cloud adoption team will understand the fundamentals of your core methodology. From there, the team is likely ready to take on additional scenarios and start implementing some additional best practices.

Deliverables:

• Increase skills and experience to handle more complex adoption scenarios.

Guidance to support delivery completion:

The team can review and expand their skills by reviewing the following guidelines:

• Migrate new types of workloads or solve more complex migration challenges throughscenariosmiBetter practices.
• Innovate using new cloud-native solutions or solve more complex innovation challenges throughscenariosmiBetter practices.

Responsible team:

• The cloud adoption team is responsible for expanding your skill set.

Step 5: Create a Cloud Adoption Factory

As the team becomes familiar with various adoption scenarios, it will be able to do more and faster. This guidance section will take your team's adoption skills to the next level.

The cloud adoption factory approach looks at the processes behind adoption efforts. Due to a lack of understanding and clear communication, most of the time the burden related to migration and innovation comes from a high volume of meetings. Clearly defining the processes and interactions at the various stages of the cloud adoption journey will remove cultural and political roadblocks.

Deliverables:

• Improve delivery processes to create a highly optimized adoption factory.

Guidance to support delivery completion:

• Process orientation that supportsmigration effortsit can be found in the process improvements section of the Migrate methodology.
• In the Innovate methodology, the guide focuses oninnovation processesresulting in less technology and more efficient product development.

Responsible team:

• The cloud adoption team is responsible for creating the processes that take adoption to the next level.

what's next

Cloud adoption is a great goal, but unchecked adoption can produce unexpected results. To accelerate adoption and best practices as you reduce business and technical risk, align cloud adoption withcloud governance functions.

Alignment with the cloud governance team creates a balance between cloud adoption efforts, but this is considered a minimum viable product (MVP) because it may not be sustainable. Each team is wearing many hats as described in theRACI charts.

learn more about overcomingsilos and mansions.