Migration from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online & Government Community Cloud

Bayen Group was solicited to provide a multi-version SharePoint migration of over two dozen custom applications tailored to the client’s specific, government-based needs to address the SharePoint 2013 end of life in April 2023. We conducted assessment, planning, migration and support.

Northrop Grumman is a global aerospace, defense and security company. The majority of their business is with the U.S. government, principally the Department of Defense and intelligence community. In addition, they deliver solutions to global and commercial customers.

• 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion

Migration from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online and the Government Community Cloud for all sites, solutions and tools

• Large footprint migration involving 26 individual custom applications some of which included integration of SAP
• Upgrading out-of-date systems that will no longer function after SharePoint 2013 end of life including SharePoint workflow engine and InfoPath
• Expedited, multi-step migration from SharePoint 2013 directly to SharePoint Online (modern)

Planning

• Technical Lead worked closely with the client’s IT department to audit and document the current SharePoint 2013 environment including 26 custom applications
  • Assessed existing applications to determine what would be retrofitted and what would remain as-is
  • Designed the information architecture and migration plan
  • Worked closely with the technical team to review and approve the design and migration plan
  • Created a project schedule for the migration project
  • Ensured safe and secure handling of data to meet stringent security standards
• As existing tools would no longer be functional after SharePoint 2013 end of life, the technical team mapped out design of application migrations to utilize Power Automate, Power Apps and Power BI

Setup

• Conducted site collection
• Moved branding assets to ensure continuity of environment and ease of transfer
• Tested the new SharePoint Online architecture
• Mitigated any issues that came up during testing
• Setup/configured the ShareGate migration tool
• Converted all sites and tools utilizing workflow and InfoPath to Power Automate, Power Apps and SharePoint (modern)
• Provided appropriate knowledge transfer to the technical team for the new SharePoint Online architecture

Migration

• Leveraging an agile approach, our team categorized this migration into several groups so that each team could focus on multiple apps simultaneously and move the process along quickly to ensure a rapid deployment
• Original timeframe was 16 months, our team deployed the migration in 5
• Created the appropriate sites per the approved migration plan
• Migrated applications and data including all sites (including those integrated with SAP), lists and libraries in compliance with security requirements
• Convert custom code to .NET Core 6
• Utilized ShareGate to migrate content from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online and the Government Community Cloud

Validation

• Technical team tested all sites and apps that were migrated to SharePoint Online
• Worked closely with the team during user acceptance testing (UAT)
• Collaborated with the client to collect any bugs identified during UAT
• Mitigated any bugs identified during UAT
• Provided in-depth change management to guarantee ease of migration from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online and the Government Community Cloud
  • Communicated all parts of the process to the client
  • Updated all applicable links and information to ensure smooth transfer
  • Kept all branding and organization to support continuity and usability