Migrating content is never easy, but it’s always transformative. Our Technical Writing team is currently transitioning from Google Docs to a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) to improve collaboration, streamline content reuse, and enhance the user experience.

This isn’t my first migration. I’ve led or contributed to four in my career, including transitions from SDL to Bluestream, Bluestream to Docs-as-Code, and a migration to Docs-as-Code at another organization. Each migration brought unique challenges.

We started with about 130 product guides—nearly 5000 pages of feature-based content—delivered to customers PDF format. Now, we’re transforming this into user-focused, topic-based, and structured content.

The migration kicked off in October 2024, with a completion target of March 2025. It’s been a whirlwind project, with no shortage of challenges.

Challenges We Faced

Here are some of the obstacles our small team of three writers has encountered:

• Quick onboarding: One writer joined just a month before the project began.
• A new, untested tool: We’re using an LCMS that’s never been used for technical documentation.
• Lack of preparation time:
  • No content inventory, audit, or information architecture was performed.
  • Outdated or duplicate content might have been migrated.
• Accelerated timelines:
  • Rewrote all content into topic-based format by December 20, 2024—without SME reviews.
  • Minimal preparation and training time for the team led to inconsistency in our topics.
  • Training on the new LCMS began only after the rewrite.
• Maintaining multiple sources: We’ve been keeping both Google Docs and rewritten versions up-to-date simultaneously.
• No pilot phase: We didn’t have the opportunity to “fail fast” and iterate.
• Communication gaps: Without a change management plan, writers have been handling product owner updates directly.
• Delayed user research: Research on documentation usage has been postponed until after the migration.
• Limited visibility: We lack visibility into the final output format, making it difficult to tailor content effectively and ensure quality.
• Critical delays: Taxonomy, content reuse plans, and output templates are still in progress.

How We Tackled the Challenges

Despite these obstacles, we used creativity and resourcefulness to keep the project moving forward:

• AI-powered efficiency: Leveraged a ChatGPT assistant chain to reverse-engineer user stories, generate short descriptions, create concept topics, and check style compliance.
• Built a strong foundation:
  • Developed naming conventions, folder structures, and topic type templates.
  • Created best practices and style mappings.
• Organized workflows:
  • Set up a Jira dashboard and created individual topic tickets.
  • Reviewed and converted imported files into standalone topics.
• (In progress) Conducting rigorous quality checks:
  • Ensuring task topic titles avoid gerunds, shortening titles, and verifying accuracy against original docs.
  • Tagging styles, adding components, and flagging content gaps for follow-up.

Although taxonomy and reuse aren’t being implemented during the initial migration, we plan to implement both to maximize long-term efficiency and scalability.

Lessons Learned and Your Stories

While we’re still deep in this migration, the project has reinforced key lessons: adaptability, creative problem-solving, and the importance of teamwork.

Once completed, we anticipate this migration will improve:

• Efficiency: Better collaboration and content reuse.
• Scalability: Easier updates.
• User experience: Structured, concise, and user-focused documentation.

As we progress, I’m especially curious to see how the LCMS performs in this context. Since it’s not traditionally used for technical documentation, adapting it has been a unique challenge. I’m eager to explore its strengths, limitations, and potential as we move forward.

This migration wouldn’t be possible without the dedication and resilience of my amazing team. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and excited to see how this effort impacts our organization and our users.

Have you tackled a content migration or are you planning one, I’d love to hear your insights. What strategies worked for you? What lessons did you learn along the way?