Plan a safe technology migration

This prompt plans a migration from one technology to another for a system of a size you describe, with phases and risks.

text-migration-plan-code — chatgpt — 53 words

We want to migrate from [OLD TECHNOLOGY] to [NEW TECHNOLOGY].

System size: [SIZE]
Team: [TEAM SIZE AND SKILLS]
Downtime tolerance: [TOLERANCE]

Create a phased migration plan with an assessment step, pilot, incremental rollout, testing, rollback plan and success criteria. List the top risks and how to reduce each, and estimate effort in ranges.

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Migrate one small, low-risk part first to learn what will go wrong.

Get a better result

What you will get

A phased plan to move from the old technology to the new one, with an assessment, a pilot, a step by step rollout, testing, a rollback plan, success criteria, the main risks and effort shown as ranges.

Why it works

Size, team and downtime tolerance are the three facts that decide how careful a migration must be. The phases in the prompt come straight from how teams avoid outages: learn, try small, move in steps. Asking for risks and ranges makes the plan honest, because migrations almost always take longer than a single guess.

Common mistake

The plan has one big switch-over day.

Fix: Ask for a way to run old and new side by side for a while, so each part can move and be checked on its own.

Also watch for

The rollback plan is “restore from backup”. Ask for the exact steps and how long they take, and test them once in the pilot.
The estimates are single numbers. Ask for best and worst case ranges, as the prompt says, and what would push it to the worst case.

Try a variation: write the pitch to managers

Ask for a one page summary of the plan for non technical managers, with the cost, the risks and what users will notice.

Still not right? Reply with this

We ran the pilot and learned this: [WHAT HAPPENED]. Update the plan, the risks and the effort ranges.