Skills needed to support the strategy phase of cloud adoption

The objective during the strategy phase of a cloud adoption journey is to develop the plans needed to guide its technical implementation. This phase requires critical skills such as:

• Establishing your vision.
• Building your business justification.
• Rationalizing your digital estate.
• Creating your migration backlog (technical plan).

The learning paths in the sections below help you to develop each of these skills.

Establish your vision

The success of any cloud adoption effort is defined by your business vision. When the technical team doesn't understand the motives and desired outcomes, it's hard for them to guide their efforts toward business success. Read more about documenting and articulating the business vision for the technical team:

• Adoption motivations. Document and articulate the reasons behind the technical effort.
• Business outcomes. Clearly articulate what's expected of the technical team in terms of business changes.
• Learning metrics. Establish short-term metrics that can show progress toward longer-term business outcomes.

Build your business justification

Justifying the investment to adopt the cloud can require deeper analysis and an understanding of your organization's accounting practices. The articles on business justification can help you develop these skills:

• Cloud migration business case. Establish a business case for cloud migration.

Rationalize your digital estate

You can refine your business case by aligning the desired business case with current and future digital estate inventory. These articles can guide the development of a digital estate rationalization:

• Incremental rationalization: An agile approach to rationalization that properly aligns late-bound technical decisions.
• The five Rs of rationalization: Understand the various rationalization options.

Create your migration backlog (technical plan)

Convert your business case and rationalized digital estate into an actionable migration plan to guide the technical activities required to achieve your desired business outcomes.

Business planning skills

During the readiness phase, technical staff creates a migration landing zone capable of hosting, operating, and governing workloads that have been migrated to the cloud. These learning paths can help you develop the necessary skills:

• Create an Azure account. The first step to using Azure is to create an account. Your account holds the Azure services you provision and handles your personal settings, like identity, billing, and preferences.
• Azure portal. Tour the Azure portal features and services, and customize the portal.
• Introduction to Azure. Get started with Azure by creating and configuring your first virtual machine in the cloud.
• Introduction to security in Azure. Learn the basic concepts for protecting your infrastructure and data when you work in the cloud. Understand what responsibilities are yours and what Azure takes care of for you.
• Manage resources in Azure. Learn how to work with the Azure command line and web portal to create, manage, and control cloud-based resources.
• Create a VM. Create a virtual machine by using the Azure portal.
• Azure networking. Learn the basics of Azure networking and how Azure networking helps you improve resiliency and reduce latency.
• Azure compute options. Learn about the Azure compute services.
• Secure resources with Azure RBAC. Use Azure RBAC to secure resources.
• Data storage options. Learn about the benefits of Azure data storage.

Organizational skills

Depending on the motivations and desired business outcomes of a cloud adoption effort, leaders might need to establish new organizational structures or virtual teams to facilitate various functions. These articles will help you develop the skills necessary to structure those teams to meet desired outcomes:

• Initial organizational alignment. Overview of organizational alignment and various team structures to facilitate specific goals.
• Breaking down silos and fiefdoms. Understanding two common organizational antipatterns and ways to guide a team to productive collaboration.

Deeper skills exploration

Various learning options beyond these initial options are available for developing skills.

Typical mappings of cloud IT roles

Microsoft and partners offer various options for all audiences to develop skills with Azure services.

• Map roles and skills: A resource for mapping your cloud career path. Learn about your cloud role and suggested skills. Follow a learning curriculum at your own pace to build the skills that you need most to stay relevant.

• Explore Azure certification training and exams to gain official recognition for your Azure knowledge.

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn is a new approach to learning. Readiness for the new skills and responsibilities that come with cloud adoption doesn't come easily. Microsoft Learn provides a more rewarding approach to hands-on learning that helps you achieve your goals faster. Earn points and levels, and achieve more!

Here is an example of a tailored learning path that aligns to the Strategy methodology of the Cloud Adoption Framework.

Learn the business value of Microsoft Azure: This learning experience will take you on a journey that will begin by showing you how digital transformation and the power of the cloud can transform your business. We will cover how Microsoft Azure Cloud Services can power your organization on a trusted cloud platform. Finally, we will wrap up by illustrating how to make this journey real for your organization.

Learn more

To discover more learning paths, browse the Microsoft Learn training catalog. Use the Roles filter to align learning paths with your role.