This series was a lot of fun to write up.  I enjoyed all your comments along the way, thanks for sharing them all with everyone that's following along.

I wanted to share some final thoughts and wrap up stuff with this series of posts. I haven't mentioned testing at all yet - mainly because it is a highly personal thing that has to be determined by your migration team - more on this in a bit. A couple of things I have learned throughout the refinement of this migration process;

  • Your chances of success are directly related to the level of management AND technical staff “buy in"
  • Get out there, share, communicate
  • Map technologies to business drivers to increase buy in
  • Create a clearly defined communication plan that is tailored to the appropriate audience

Testing procedures need to be developed, documented and checked.  People have to "own" the tests and determine exactly what needs to be done for each test.  These test plans then need to be tried out BEFORE the migration to ensure they work in the first place (you'd be surprised if I told you how many WEREN’T tested before hand and didn't work after). These tests will be performed after the migration and post migration configurations are complete.  If they pass - you are a go.  If not - you have to continue to troubleshoot to get them working.

Management and Technical Staff "buy-in" is critical in being able to work though or around any political roadblocks that come up along the way.  You will need to be able to speak to the appropriate levels in the language they understand and satisfy their needs for this migration.  Sometimes needs are actually benefits and goals directly related to what is important to them and what drives the business.  You aren't doing this upgrade for the sake of technology - you are doing it to make your business more agile, reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to manage it which in turn will make your job easier by giving you more time to look after OTHER things that need your attention.  Without buy-in - you aren't going to get far and you will be shackled to political decisions that just don't make sense.

The communications plan is also critical.  Keeping the appropriate people in the loop along the process of the migration is very important.

Let's hear it for single domain forests! (where appropriate) Let's hear it for simplified AD designs!