The word Migrationcan be misunderstood. What do I mean here? During conversation with stakeholders (people who make important decisions about future of your product/system/website) the word Migration or migrate may trigger some assumption.

It means that everyone in the room think that migration is super easy. Like iPhone IOS update. You click “Yes, update now!” and new version of software is installed.

I am not sure why, but in eCommerce website development it is slightly different process. There is no magic “Update” button. Or “Bring me new version of website in seconds”. Of course, you can update CMS platform (e.g. Grav, WordPress) just in one click. If you have zero customizations

The Migration word is tricky to use. In case you run website on Magento 1.7 and you decided to move to Magento 1.9 – it is a migration. But when you have Magento 2 platform with lots of architectural changes it is different.

Consider this as an example. You have budget car. You decide that it is a time to have a new luxury car. Will you call it migration? The only thing you can migrate is an emergency kit. Your spare wheel will be different, seat cover will be different. It makes no sense to bring some pieces from budget car to a luxury car. Right?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that Magento 1.9 compare to Magento 2.0 has this big difference as example with the cars. The Magento 2.0 platform has lots of changes and it is improper to call it Migration.

Why?

Stakeholders expect to have estimate for migration from Magento 1.9 to Magento 2 close (or same) to estimate when you migrate between Magento 1.x versions. How do you like 1-3 weeks to migrate to Magento 2?

From my experience working with stakeholders it is better to use phrase Website Upgrade or Major Upgrade. It shifts to positive decisions.

Wikipedia holds the definition for upgrade:

Upgrading is the process of replacing a product with a newer version of the same product. In computing and consumer electronics an upgrade is generally a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date or to improve its characteristics.

Stakeholders are your final call before Website Upgrade to Magento 2. Provide as much information and use right words for making it happen.

In our case we have strong points for Major Upgrade:

1. Business objective to scale website together with the business.
2. Highly customized View layer (templates) of Magento 1.x platform.
3. Two non-responsive copies of Magento Themes for desktop and mobile version.
4. Ability to install and configure additional functionality in minutes.
5. Costs to support multiple shipping addresses in 1 order and feature requests.

What are your strong points for Magento 2 Upgrade? Share your thoughts in comments below.