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Choosing a Team

When starting a migration to the cloud, you must carefully choose your project team to research, design, implement, and maintain the new system. We recommend that your team has individuals in the following roles with the understanding that a person can play multiple roles:

  • A project leader capable of managing the project end-to-end, and with enough technical expertise and background on big data technology to make decisions.

  • A data engineer with a strong background in Apache Hadoop and other technologies that are being migrated. This background is helpful to understand how the underlying applications work, their intended uses, and their limitations. 

  • An infrastructure engineer well-versed in the automation of infrastructure provisioning on AWS and familiar with tools like AWS CloudFormation, Terraform (by HashiCorp), and so on. This person should also be familiar with test automation, including CI/CD approaches and tools.

  • A security engineer able to provide guidance on the security requirements that your company mandates. This person should be knowledgeable enough to map the organization's security requirements to security features offered by AWS. This person should be open to alternative security implementations that satisfy the organization's requirements.

  • A group of engineers who are quick learners and are not afraid to dive into areas that they may not be familiar with.

All members in the migration team must exhibit the following characteristics:

  • They must have an open mind and ability to think differently. Cloud infrastructure requires a paradigm shift on how resources are treated.

  • They must be able to dive deep into the underlying frameworks, architectures, and issues.

  • They must be aligned on the project's mission and direction.