Our organization is moving from on-premise servers to AWS. I've been assigned as the lead BA, but I’m worried the project is "too technical" for me. What specific business analysis tasks should I focus on to ensure the migration meets business needs and doesn't just focus on the IT infrastructure?
3 answers
Focus on the "Non-Functional Requirements" like scalability and performance. Cloud projects are the perfect time to redefine how fast a system should be, not just how it is.
Your value in a Cloud Migration is performing a comprehensive "As-Is vs. To-Be" Gap Analysis. While the engineers focus on the "Lift and Shift," you should be looking at "Service Level Agreements" (SLAs) and "Business Continuity." Ask the stakeholders: What is the acceptable downtime? What are the data residency requirements for our region? You are the bridge that ensures the technical solution actually supports the business operations. You should also be heavily involved in "User Acceptance Testing" (UAT) to prove that the application performs just as well—if not better—in the cloud environment.
Have you mapped out the third-party integrations? Often, the cloud move breaks old API connections that IT might overlook but the business relies on for daily reporting.
Larry, you hit the nail on the head. I once worked on a migration where we forgot about a legacy printer driver that the shipping department used. The BA should create an "Integration Map." This document lists every single internal and external touchpoint the system has. By checking these off during the migration, you prevent those "Day 1" disasters where a critical business process fails because a "small" technical connection was missed. It’s the BA's job to see the forest, while the developers are busy looking at the individual trees.
Exactly, Carol. It's the best time to clean house and get rid of redundant requirements that no longer serve the business objectives.