Day One activities for MAD work are often chaotic. I remember the 6 AM wake-ups by an AP Mobile Alert and my pager going off! After a cup of coffee, the first thing I would try to find out was if the other company was on Exchange, Notes, or Google. Today this issue is less of a concern, but one has taken its place: Slack.
If you are an Office 365/ Teams shop, acquiring a company that used Slack can create a similar panic to finding a Notes environment. In this article, I will outline the steps you can take when you acquire a company with Slack and want to undertake a Slack to Teams migration.
The Political Landscape
Slack and Innovation have been commonly aligned. Many tech startups adopted Slack in their early days, and it has created a passionate user base. For years the aversion for Slack users to switch to Microsoft Teams was well-founded with the massive difference in the platforms. As years have gone on, the distinction between Slack and Teams is minor, including applications & integrations.
During a Merger, Acquisition, or Divestiture, tensions can be high, and employees can feel a bit lost. A Slack-To-Teams migration can bring out some of these emotions and challenges. And a Slack to Teams migration can undoubtedly add to the typical MAD issues.
Let’s review some methods that can make this migration the most successful from both user relations and technical perspectives.
Be Clear & Honest
Perhaps the most crucial aspect of any MAD project is open, transparent, and honest communication. I cover this in detail with MJ Flanagan from MJInspire in our series Method To The Madness Series found here: https://madmike.net/method-to-the-madness/
Early on in the integration, people may ask if they can keep Slack in the integration. If your standard is Microsoft Teams, and this is likely going to continue as the standard, say this openly. It will be much worse to delay this discussion.
In your weekly newsletter, you should consider statements like this:
“The organization uses Microsoft Teams for its collaboration & automation needs. I know many of you are used to Slack and enjoy using it. As we come together as one company, we will plan a migration of Slack to Teams to communicate on the same platform. It is crucial that we do not have different systems as it will not allow for you to fully integrate into the new company and prevent your new colleagues from fully engaging with you.
We will engage with Tech Leads to make this as smooth as possible. For those who have migrated from Slack To Teams before, please know this process has drastically improved in the last six months. If you have a specific task/integration in Slack, please raise this with your manager so that it can be investigated and we can confirm that there is a matching function in Slack.”
If you do not know the answer, consider a statement like this:
“The organization uses Microsoft Teams for its collaboration & automation needs. I know many of you are used to Slack and enjoy using it. We have not made any decisions yet on this. When it is the right time, we will need to balance several factors, including the preference to stay on Slack, the cost of running two systems, productivity costs of moving & having two systems, migration costs, and so much more. This will not be decided overnight. In the meantime, you are welcome to continue to use Slack and join your new colleges in Teams as needed.
Engage
When it comes time to start your migration project, you need to engage your user base. My advice is to take the loudest Slack users and have them help you plan! These passionate users can become your strongest allies in the migration once they are engaged in the project. Many people can confuse this passion with causing issues, but they are protecting their fellow user base and customers from impact in many cases. It may seem like it will be a pain for you if you lead the project, but put them on the migration committee. At first, the efforts might be high, but the whole org will have a high-quality migration with these individuals being on the team.
When it comes time for migration planning, you will need to engage in many different areas. This can include mapping Slack Channels to Teams and Applications & Integrations to Teams Applications. This will be another topic that I go into on the Quest blog here: https://www.quest.com/community/blogs/b/microsoft-platform-management/posts/slack-to-teams-migration-challenges-and-drivers
Scope The Complexity
The first significant step in this process is planning. This week on Practical365 I covered some easy steps to scope your Slack-To-Teams Migration project. I highly recommend anyone considering a project like this start with these simple steps. This article can be found here: https://practical365.com/how-to-plan-your-slack-to-teams-project/
Pay special attention to the section on running your analytics reports.
Migration Beta Program
Several colleagues of mine are working together on a beta program at Quest on migrating Slack to Teams. If you are interested, please register here: Slack-to-Teams Preview Program (quest.com)
