SharePoint Migration - a single person task or a teamwork

Question

I have never done migration in my professional career but soon would be coming across a project that needs migration from SharePoint 2010 to 2013. Can SharePoint Migration be done by single SharePoint Administrator or needs a teamwork?

Answer 1

Depending on the size of the existing farm one can plan the migration process accordingly. If SharePoint is categorized as a critical application, then detailed planning is required. Its always nice to setup a test migration plan, and execute it to find out if the migration will be smooth. This also helps to find out what to expect, downtime etc. This also helps a smooth production migration.

One of my recent migration involved following players.

Feasibility Study - Business Analyst/Developer

1. Analyze the existing 2010 farm and find out the various customization's that is installed. (Mainly you can look into the farm solutions that are installed)
2. Make sure those customization's are compatible with 2013

SharePoint 2013 migration involves following steps - System Administrator/SQL Admin

1. Create a 2013 farm
2. Copy databases to new farm
3. Upgrade service applications
4. Upgrade content databases
5. Then site collection upgrade

Source

Testing - Business Analyst/Site Collection Owner/Tester

1. Test the migrated site to make sure it is working as expected
2. Find issues and pass it to the development team

Fixing - Developer

1. Fix issues reported and deploy fixes

Answer 2

It all depends on number of customizations made on SP 2010. If you have a lot of customizations involved then you might need a helping hand from developers. Otherwise, if SP admin has appropriate permissions then he can do it by himself. From my experience, our SP admin successfully migrated a few sites, mostly SP 2007 -> SP 2010.

I would recommend you to read through migration guide on Technet. It will provide you with the necessary steps needed for migration.