Accelerating cloud migration through service design

Summary

The challenge

The Department of Defense (DoD) relies on WxPO to deliver critical terrestrial and space weather intelligence. Meteorologists, air traffic controllers, pilots, and intelligence professionals use WxPO’s applications to predict weather patterns, prepare forecasts, and communicate essential weather information. These tools operate 24/7, supporting mission planning and execution.

As part of the DoD’s modernization imperative, WxPO initiated a plan in 2017 to migrate more than 75 applications and services to the cloud. This ambitious goal included deprecating on-prem servers and creating a single user interface — called BIFROST — for all applications and services by 2025. Along with the opportunity to leverage the benefits of operating in a cloud environment (e.g., enhanced scalability), the effort also required reevaluating and improving how users experience WxPO’s portfolio of applications.

However, WxPO’s legacy environment — comprising aging, on-premise systems — presented significant challenges. These systems weren’t designed to meet today’s diverse user needs or take advantage of modern tools and processes. As a result:

• Teams struggled to deploy updates quickly and efficiently
• The aging infrastructure limited scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency
• The lack of integration across systems increased manual workloads and reduced data accessibility for users

While the move to the cloud promised modernization and streamlined workflows, the migration effort ran into hurdles:

• Balancing the maintenance of legacy systems with the planning and execution of cloud migrations created bottlenecks
• A lack of a clear vision or coordinated plan led to miscommunication, rework, and frustration
• Teams were overwhelmed by learning new technologies without enough guidance, leaving them in a constant state of uncertainty

I think it’s affected all of middle management because every day, we’re trying to put things together and every day, we’re in some form of lost and found.

Weather Officer, Acquisitions Training

Limited engagement with end users added to these challenges. WxPO’s legacy applications were built without a clear understanding of the diverse goals, roles, and workflows of their users, leading to gaps in functionality and usability.

Faced with these challenges, WxPO partnered with our team to reinvigorate their cloud migration efforts. Leveraging our Service Design Accelerator program, we worked with WxPO to identify root issues, align teams, and establish priorities to move their migration forward.

The solution

Our Service Design Accelerator provided a structured approach to tackle WxPO’s challenges and create momentum in their cloud migration efforts.

We started by:

• Fostering a unified strategic direction by creating an overarching vision to align teams, establish shared goals, and lay the foundation for long-term success, ensuring all migration efforts supported a cohesive, mission-critical outcome
• Enhancing the developer experience by introducing modern tools, fostering increased autonomy, and facilitating smoother workflows
• Applying service design techniques to holistically analyze WxPO’s cloud migration challenges, identify root issues, and craft targeted solutions across key operational areas

Through these efforts, we gained critical insights into areas WxPO needed to focus on for their migration’s success. Based on these insights, we recommended eight key areas for improvement, which shaped our work for the remainder of the project:

1. Build a shared migration vision and plan: Establish a unified roadmap and goals to align teams and minimize miscommunication during the migration
2. Standardize and define roles: Clearly define responsibilities for key roles to streamline decision-making and accountability
3. Establish a uniform communication strategy: Implement consistent protocols to improve cross-team information sharing and reduce misunderstandings
4. Improve agile processes: Optimize workflows like backlog prioritization and sprint planning to boost productivity and project alignment
5. Create self-service artifacts: Develop tools and documentation that enable teams to independently handle tasks like troubleshooting or onboarding
6. Provide updated training materials: Modernize training guides to ensure team members can effectively use new tools and systems
7. Enhance support services: Strengthen technical and operational systems to efficiently address team and user needs during and after migration
8. Continue discovery efforts to identify emerging needs: Regularly engage users and stakeholders to uncover new requirements and adapt plans

We worked alongside WxPO to tackle these areas while equipping their teams with the tools, processes, and knowledge needed to sustain progress and keep advancing improvements.

By embedding with WxPO teams, we helped build the capacity needed for a successful transition from legacy paradigms to a modern digital platform. This revitalized WxPO’s efforts, letting them confidently drive progress and better support the DoD weather community’s needs.

The results

• Delivered a suite of tools and resources, including a human-centered design playbook, service blueprints, persona templates, user research plans, an assumptions tracker, and an outcome-oriented roadmap, helping WxPO advance their cloud migration efforts effectively
• Conducted targeted trainings and worked directly with application teams to streamline processes, improve workflows, and speed up migration activities, fostering stronger alignment and reducing operational friction
• Developed a sustainable framework for delivering modernized, user-centered solutions, setting the stage for WxPO’s success in meeting its ambitious 2025 goals and supporting the DoD weather community