How did we help one client out of a technical tight spot?

This Fortune 250 diversified financials group had just agreed a price to sell part of its business. However, the handover of this bundle of digital products and assets in the Pensions and Benefits market was subject to specific contractual obligations from the buyer. One of which was to migrate multiple Microsoft Azure DevOps projects from the seller’s subscription to that of the buyer.

So far, so good. Until it transpired that the client had waited a little too long to transfer the Azure projects itself. It turned out that it had just two weeks to make the migration before facing contractual penalties. That’s when the client reached out to Emergn and asked us to come to the rescue.

With no prior knowledge of the client’s Azure DevOps projects involved in the transfer, this was not a straightforward challenge. Our experts identified three questions in particular that needed answering to get the migration completed in time:

1. How to uncover information that would be key to the success of the transfer such as the size of repositories, size of files, and the content of those files?
2. How to migrate all the Work Items associated with the Projects, as well as all the dependencies associated?
3. How to migrate all the CI/CD Pipelines and the Test Plans that the Projects have?

Answering these questions (and enabling the Emergn team to successfully complete the task at hand) required input from both sides. There had to be consensus between both the seller’s and the buyer’s teams on what the current-to-future state should look like. 

The whole process – from initial call to final delivery – was completed in just two calendar weeks. In that time, four Emergn experts conducted all stakeholder interviews, aligned expectations, and assessed technical requirements. They also delivered outcomes that meant the buyer could self-reliantly continue to operate the financial assets they had been sold.  

The initial requirement was to extract necessary projects and duplicate repositories from TFS to TFS. Through our consultative approach though, we were able to advise on a route that was better aligned with the buyer’s vision for its Azure DevOps projects. With its preference for establishing an end-to-end and scalable platform, we recommended converting from TFS to Git. 

Changing the way an organization works in this way can seem like a daunting task. Especially when the pre-existing approach had been working for many years. However, switching to Git had several key benefits (including running data pipelines more efficiently). The fact that our experts were able to introduce this early on in the conversation gave the buyer an option for better ways of working and added value to the transfer process.  

Despite the legal and contractual pressures on this deal-breaking project, it was crucial that the handover was conducted not only quickly but also compliantly. By following the principles of VFQ that enabled the close collaboration, ongoing fine-tuning, and effective delivery, both parties were able to get what they expected from the sale. In just a two-week window of opportunity.