Part Two: The product · The first days
People arrive with years of existing work and a way of doing things that still runs. A move that drags on leaves them paying for two systems, and they drift back.
Nobody comes to a product empty-handed. They bring records, files, templates, history, and an old system that is still switched on.
Moving is a project the customer does in spare time, on top of the normal work. In the middle of it they run both systems. Everything is entered twice. Nobody is sure which copy is right. If that stretch goes on, the old system wins, because the old system has everything in it.
A secondary school moves its student records to a new system over the summer. Nobody sets a day for turning the old one off. In September the timetables are in the new system, but the notes on each student from earlier years are only in the old one. Staff keep both open. By Christmas, new notes are being written in whichever is nearer, and the school is paying for two systems to hold one set of students.
Inside the company that sold it, the work is easy to lose. Sales counts the signature. The product team counts features. The move lands on a customer success colleague with a spreadsheet, and nothing in the product helps her or the school.
What the school lacked was an end. A switch can be finished when three things exist. There is a date for turning the old system off. There is a list, kept by the product, of what still lives only in the old system, which shrinks as things are brought across or declared not needed. And there is a named person on each side who owns getting that list to nothing.
Therefore:
Treat the move as part of the product. Give it an end: a date for turning the old system off, a visible list of what still lives only there, and someone who owns emptying it.
In practice. Ask recent customers how long they ran both systems, and what they were still opening the old one for. That list is your work. Go through it each week with the customer success colleague who runs the moves, until it is empty.
Goes with. The old way's pull is one of the FORCES FOR AND AGAINST (4). A TRIAL WITH YOUR OWN WORK (32) shows what will come across. The way in should match the way out: EASY TO LEAVE (15).