Tool Migration & Integration

The Problem

The team was running parallel systems—Jira for engineering, Excel for PMO, email for approvals. Nothing connected. Data lived in 4 places, and no one trusted any single source.

This created a predictable pattern of chaos:

• Engineering asked "what should I work on next?" and got different answers from Jira vs. the PMO spreadsheet
• Leadership asked "where are we on Project X?" and got different answers from different people
• Approvals stalled because they lived in email threads that got buried
• The PMO spent 4+ hours every week reconciling data across systems

The Constraints

• Budget for one tool only
• Migration had to happen while active projects continued
• No dedicated IT support
• Team was already frustrated with the current state and had low tolerance for disruption

The stakes were high: a botched migration could derail in-flight projects and destroy what little trust remained in operational processes.

What We Did

Phase 1: Comprehensive Audit

Before recommending anything, we audited all workflows across both teams. We tracked:

• What data gets created where
• Who needs to see what
• What triggers handoffs between teams
• Where approvals actually happen vs. where they should happen

This revealed that 80% of the PMO's Excel data was duplicated in Jira—just in different fields with different names.

Phase 2: Consolidation Strategy

We recommended consolidating to Jira with custom fields for PMO needs. This meant:

• One source of truth for both engineering and PMO
• Built-in workflow automation for approvals
• Native reporting that both teams could use

Phase 3: Clean Migration

We built a migration plan that handled the messiest parts:

1. Data cleanup: Standardized naming conventions, archived stale projects, merged duplicates
2. Field mapping: Created custom fields in Jira that matched PMO needs
3. Historical data: Imported 18 months of project history with proper linking

Phase 4: Automation Layer

We created automations for approvals and notifications using Zapier:

• Stage transitions trigger approval requests
• Approvers get Slack notifications with one-click approve/reject
• Weekly digest emails replace manual status reports
• Escalation rules prevent approvals from stalling

Phase 5: Parallel Training

Because the teams had different mental models, we trained them separately:

• Engineering: Focused on how their existing workflows translated to the new setup
• PMO: Focused on custom fields, reports, and dashboard creation

The Result

Single source of truth achieved. Weekly reporting time dropped from 4 hours to 15 minutes. Cross-team visibility enabled for the first time.

The PMO manager's Friday afternoon report-building ritual was replaced with a scheduled Jira dashboard export. Engineers stopped asking "is this the latest priority list?" because there was only one list.

"I didn't believe it was possible to get both teams on the same system. Six months later, I can't imagine going back." — Engineering Manager

Tools Used

• Jira
• Excel (sunset)
• Zapier
• Confluence

Key Takeaways

1. Audit before you act: Understanding the current state prevented us from recreating the same problems in new tooling
2. Clean as you migrate: Bringing messy data into a new system just creates new mess
3. Automate the pain points: The approval bottleneck was the highest-leverage fix
4. Train for mental models, not features: Each team needed to see the new system through their existing lens
5. Sunset the old system completely: Leaving Excel accessible would have invited people to use it as a backup