What are the top 5 things you need to know when starting a BPM migration project?

On Demand Consulting
Author: Werner Tod

BPM migrations are never a trivial task as BPM is a fairly complex middleware, typically integrating with numerous backend systems. While the product has been significantly improved in this area, proper planning and execution is still mandatory in order to run a successful version-to-version migration.
These are the Top 5 things you need to know when starting a BPM migration project!

Getting these things right allows you to have a good migration experience with as little negative impact to your business as possible.
Let's look at these recommendations in more detail.

1.  Never underestimate the effort and complexity of a migration!
As mentioned before, BPM version-to-version migrations are complex and require significant implementation effort, both for planning and the technical work. Therefore, BPM migrations should always be treated in the same way as every other IT development project. At least one project manager needs to be assigned who keeps track of the requirements, plan, project resources, progress and potential project issues.
The preparation of a BPM migration project should happen well ahead of time, so that the requirements can be analyzed, the ideal migration approach can be determined, and the required resources can be assigned. Typically, a BPM migration involving a full-blown environment with Development, Test, Staging and Production systems requires at least weeks, if not months to implement. Planning with just a few days is unrealistic.
The following article describes the challenges for planning a BPM migration project:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/aimsupport/entry/bpmmigrationsizing?lang=en
Another "golden rule" for the planning of a BPM migration project is to minimize the project scope as much as possible. Major refactoring of applications and restructuring of the underlying infrastructure should be avoided and be handled in separate projects that are implemented either before or after the BPM migration.

2.  Use proper documentation!
Documentation is a key factor for the success of BPM migrations. In many projects the lack of proper system and application documentation is a major inhibitor for an efficient implementation. In these situations the BPM migration project can be a big opportunity to fix this operations issue and create the missing documentation in the course of the migration.
Similarly creating proper documentation about the applied migration approach and the necessary individual migration steps ("migration cookbook") from the beginning of the project reduces the effort for subsequent migration phases and future installation and migration projects.
The most important piece of documentation from a product perspective is the BPM Knowledge Center. It can be found for the various product versions at this location:
http://www.ibm.com/software/integration/business-process-manager/library/documentation
The following rules apply to the proper use of the BPM Knowledge Center:
(a) Follow installation and migration instructions very closely and step-by-step!
(b) Do not leave out instructions or modify instructions without having consulted IBM experts or the technical experts in your team!
The documented procedures in the Knowledge Center are the only ones that have been successfully tested by IBM Development. Any major deviation can potentially lead to a complete failure of a migration.

3.  Always back things up before migrating!
BPM version-to-version migrations especially when migrating existing applications with their process / case instances and data are a major disruption for the running BPM infrastructure and thus a potential threat to the consistency of the data. It is therefore indispensable to back up the existing data and BPM configuration (BPM directories and databases IBM Installation Manager directories) before implementing major migration steps.
Information about consistent backups for BPM can be found here:
https://developer.ibm.com/answers/questions/168030/consistent-backups-for-ibm-business-process-manage.html
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSFTBX_8.5.6/com.ibm.wbpm.admin.doc/topics/cadm_recovery_top.html

4.  Test test test!
Testing functional and non-functional aspects of the BPM infrastructure configuration and applications is a key activity before during and after BPM migrations. As a general rule any issue that exists going into a migration project will still exist afterwards or even lead to a failed migration attempt.
BPM version-to-version migrations are typically implemented following a staged approach:
Development systems >> Test systems >> Staging systems >> Production systems
It is strongly recommended to fully script and document the migration tasks for each environment. These scripts together with all other required files (e.g. properties files xml files etc.) are tested in one environment and then re-used and adjusted for the next environment. This way the risk of a failed migration is lowest for the last migration typically the migration of the Production environment.
In order to avoid a failed Production migration it is mandatory to test the migration procedure using
(a) a BPM environment that resembles the Production environment as much as possible AND
(b) production data AND
(c) backend connectivity that corresponds to that of the Production environment.
Testing with production data has been enabled with the support of database clones introduced with IBM BPM V8.5.6.
The following paper is a good reference for testing BPM:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/bpm/bpmjournal/1412_chan1/1412_chan1.html
BPM performance aspects can be tested following the information in this paper:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248216.html?Open

5.  Use IBM Services!
Last but not least it is strongly recommended to involve IBM experts when planning and potentially when executing a BPM migration project. This way the efficiency of the project can be increased; required fixes can be identified and provided early; migration issues can be analyzed and resolved quickly.
There are three ways how to get migration support from IBM:
(a) using an existing Accelerated Value Program contract:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/services/discoveravp.html
(b) using IBM On Demand Consulting (aka. Expert Access Service):
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/services/discoverodc.html
(c) using IBM Software Services:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/services/discoverbpm.html