We ran a divestiture migration with a five-person Hyper Care team supporting 500+ clients through three post-cutover phases. Users needed added to groups. Machines needed application access that are not assigned in SCCM/MECM/InTune to user Active Directory objects.

The list goes on and on…The tool wasn’t what made the migration work.

Common causes of enterprise migration failures include: missed items in discovery, ineffective talks with stakeholders, or not enough resources for Hyper Care.

None of these are tool limitations.

The runbook tells you how the program ends before it starts.

The Azure Migration runbook I created for a large divestiture allowed the tool to work correctly. The runbook allowed the Smartsheet to be built from based off of past successful executions. A missing step in the application migration workflow was found where there was no time for a poweruser to test the migrated environment before cutover and have feedback addressed.

Active Directory migrations have to be completed before the applications are migrated to avoid permissions problems.

Even if your MigrationWiz engagement or Azure Migrate Tool deployment is built correctly; it can drift.

The tool does not enforce the plan. What enforces the plan is the documentation.

Most migration programs fail because of a gap in identity planning. Planning failures include not validating Entra ID synchronization time, hybrid identity configuration and domain rehoming sequence before cutover.

The migration tool that you choose is less important than the runbook and support team that you create before you open the program.

What’s the planning step your team always underestimates before a tenant-to-tenant cutover?

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