Website migration project

mrnewsguy

Hello,

I'm a new Smartsheet user, managing a large health care website redesign project. We have a large amount of content to move from an older CMS to a new one. We're also moving from a static to a dynamic site environment.

Are there any users here who have used Smartsheet to manage and track a large content migration project like this? Any recommendations, best practices, things you would do differently if you could?



Thanks for your help and input.

Shaine Greenwood

Hello,

You might start with a template from the Smartsheet template gallery. In Smartsheet, click your Home tab then select Create New > Browse Templates.

We track some of our Website team dev work in sprints using the "Basic Agile Project with Gantt Timeline" template. Agile is a great method for tracking progress and staying aggressive toward deadlines. It also leaves devs open to push tasks that may be taking more time than normal down to a later sprint when needed.

Richard Rymill SBP

Hi Dan

Shaine is right, working from a tried and tested template for this work could help, but your needs sound to be very specific to the work you are doing, so maybe start with a "template" we have used before very successfully, and modify it with your own requirements, which wont take long. but will mean you get exactly what you need. 

My colleagues and i have considerable experience doing this type of work in Healthcare, universities, gov bodies and private industry, each with their own special requirements. 

If you just want some quick guidance, we offer a free initial consultation or if you can find some budget for us to proactively assist you, we can make quick and reliable progress for you? 

We have colleagues in the USA like Craig Williams (the top Smartsheet community contributor) myself, James Rezin and other specialist available if needed? 

Regards and just to confirm that Smartsheet is the ideal tool for what you plan to do! 

RichardR

 

J. Craig Williams

You are going to make me blush Richard!

There is a lot of usefulness in the Templates but they are like an aperitif (without the alcohol) - they provide a taste to whet your appetite for more to come.

Richard's team has a lot of experience in health care systems with Smartsheet.

For my off the cuff recommendation, if you are in the starting of large project, the additional risk of a new tool set can be mitigated by seeking subject matter experts to help. In my previous life, I preached "you can change ONE thing on the next project, not EVERYTHING, but if you are going to change EVERYTHING, you must have a plan."

Here's a technical recommendation:

If you are using WordPress for your website, check out Zapier (www.zapier.com) for some useful automation with Smartsheet.

Cheers and good fortune (planning over luck).

Craig

 

 

 

 

 

Shaine Greenwood

Another thought on this: consider creating a bug tracking sheet for post migration bug logging, tracking, and fixing. Smartsheet has a template titled "Bug Tracker Board in Card View" that is a great place to start.

In the template—If you don't batch your website updates post migration, I'd recommend changing the "Target Release" column to a date column instead.