Overcoming technical debt for CMS migration
Technical debt is a challenge that is increasing as digital business becomes more complex. This debt piles up as companies opt for quick fixes or continue to rely on outdated systems, sacrificing long-term efficiency for short-term gains. As the digital world accelerates, technical debt piles up, leading to higher costs and reduced flexibility.
A recent survey found that more than 70% of companies report that technical debt significantly hinders their ability to innovate. With technological advances rapidly outpacing companies’ ability to adapt, the issue of technical debt has never been more relevant.
When migrating to a new Content Management System (CMS), reducing and limiting technical debt should be a priority. Proactively managing debt as part of your migration strategy will lead to a smoother transition and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the new solution. Plus, development teams can focus on innovation instead of just keeping the lights on.
CEO and co-founder of Hygraph.
The cost of neglect: when technical debt spirals
Several factors contribute to technical debt during CMS migrations. For example, insufficient communication between teams leads to hasty solutions and missed opportunities. Effective communication channels must be established to enable seamless collaboration. By doing this, insights and concerns about a project can be easily shared and addressed in a timely manner, rather than six months later.
Organizations must also ensure that they are not simply moving problems from one platform to another. Too many teams waste time and resources moving outdated assets, duplicate data, and unused features. This combined with time pressure and skills shortages means that some organizations end up moving to new platforms without taking full advantage of what they have to offer.
Finally, if employee training and adoption are considered an afterthought, moving to a new CMS will be a painful process. In the worst case, all the migration work is done just to get people to return to the old working methods. Having an effective change management program is essential.
Make sure your migration is a success
To make any CMS migration a success, companies should follow five steps to reduce technical debt:
1. Set up an internal migration team
This team should include representatives from different departments to provide a comprehensive understanding of how content is used across the organization. Their role includes planning the migration, identifying challenges, allocating resources and ensuring smooth knowledge transfer. For example, the team can set global standards for content management and documentation, and train colleagues in new operational methods. This ensures that all perspectives are taken into account, leading to a migration that meets the needs of the entire organization.
2. Conduct a content audit
A thorough content review is essential to identify redundant, outdated, or trivial data that does not need to be migrated. This process involves mapping where data lives, who owns it, the content types used, and the interrelationships between data sets. Especially when switching from a monolithic to a headless CMS; Understanding the support structure of different processes is critical, as older data models may not translate directly to a headless approach and may require adjustments during migration.
3. Consolidate and simplify workflows
This step includes identifying overlapping capabilities, tracking down outdated tools that are causing frustration, and determining how processes can be streamlined with the new CMS. The German food and beverage manufacturer Dr. For example, Oetker uses a headless CMS to manage digital experiences across 40 countries from a single platform, enabling consistent branding, streamlined processes and rapid global updates.
4. Design a composable content strategy
Adopting a composable content strategy is essential to maximizing the benefits of a headless CMS. This strategy involves defining reusable content models, such as ‘blog post models’ or ‘call-to-action models’, that can be served across channels. This modular approach enables rapid development of solutions for current use cases, with the flexibility to adapt models to future needs. It also allows business users to create unique experiences without developer help, illustrating the shift from a page-based to an omnichannel business mindset.
5. Federation of your content sources
As digital experiences expand, content often relies on data from multiple applications and external sources. Federating content sources is about integrating these sources in a way that minimizes maintenance-intensive integrations and resource-intensive processes.
Demand for connected digital services shows no signs of slowing, so organizations’ content strategies are increasingly under scrutiny. For those looking to migrate their CMS, this is an opportunity to take proactive steps to reduce technical debt, meaning they can focus on future innovation rather than having one eye in the rearview mirror.
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