Batches
Working in small batches is an essential principle in any discipline wherefeedback loops are important, or you want to learn quickly from yourdecisions. Working in small batches allows you to rapidly test hypotheses aboutwhether a particular improvement is likely to have the effect you want, and ifnot, lets you course correct or revisit assumptions. Although this articleapplies to any type of change that includes organizational transformation andprocess improvement, it focuses primarily on software delivery.
batches
Working in small batches is part of lean product management. Together withcapabilities likevisibility of work in the value stream,team experimentation,andvisibility into customer feedback, working in small batches predicts softwaredelivery performance and organizational performance.
One reason work is done in large batches is because ofthe large fixed cost of handing off changes.In traditional phased approaches to software development, handoffs fromdevelopment to test or from test to IT operations consist of whole releases:months worth of work by teams consisting of tens or hundreds of people. Withthis traditional approach, collecting feedback on a change can take weeks ormonths.
In contrast, DevOps practices, which utilize cross-functional teams andlightweight approaches, allow for software to progress from development throughtest and operations into production in a matter of minutes. However, thisrapid progression requires working with code in small batches.
You can apply the small batches approach at the feature and the product level.As an illustration, a minimum viable product, or MVP, is a prototype of aproduct with just enough features to enable validated learning about the productand its business model.
Continuous delivery builds upon working in small batches and tries to get everychange in version control as early as possible. A goal of continuousdelivery is to change the economics of the software delivery process, making itviable to work in small batches. This approach provides fast, comprehensivefeedback to teams so that they can improve their work.
When features are of an appropriate size, you can split the development of thefeature into even smaller batches. This process can be difficult and requiresexperience to develop. Ideally, your developers should be checking multiplesmall releasable changesinto trunk at least once per day.
The key is to start development at the service or API layer, not at the UIlayer. In this way, you can make additions to the API that won't initially beavailable to users of the app, and check those changes into trunk. You canlaunch these changes to production without making them visible to users. Thisapproach, called dark launching, allows developers to check in code for smallbatches that have been completed, but for features that are not yet fullycomplete. You can then runautomated tests against these changes to prove that they behave in the expected way. This way,teams are still working quickly anddeveloping off of trunk and not long-lived feature branches.
In this approach, batches of work aren't complete until they're deployed toproduction and the feedback process has begun to validate the changes. Feedbackcomes from many sources and in many forms, including users, system monitoring,quality assurance, and automated tests. Your goal is to optimize for speed sothat you reduce the cycle time to get changes into the hands of users. This way,you can validate your hypothesis as quickly as possible.
Working in small batches but then regrouping the batches beforesending them downstream for testing or release. Regrouping work in thisway delays the feedback on whether the changes have defects, and whetheryour users and your organization agree the changes were the right thing tobuild in the first place.
When you slice work into small batches that can be completed in hours, you cantypicallytest and deploy those batches to production in less than an hour (PDF). The key is to decompose the work into small features that allow for rapiddevelopment, rather than developing complex features on branches and releasingthem infrequently.
You can use the Migration dashboard in the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Exchange admin center (EAC) to manage mailbox migration to Microsoft 365 or Office 365 using a cutover or staged Exchange migration. You can also use the Migration dashboard to migrate the contents of users' mailboxes from an on-premises IMAP server, or the contents of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) users' mailboxes, calendars, and contacts to existing Microsoft 365 or Office 365 mailboxes. The Migration dashboard displays statistics about the overall migration in addition to statistics about a specific migration batch. You can create, start, stop, pause, and edit migration batches.
To access the Migration dashboard in the new EAC, go to new Exchange admin center, navigate to Migration > Batch. The following screenshot identifies the different areas of the Migration dashboard that you can use to get migration information and manage migration batches.
Stopped: Either the migration batch has been created but hasn't been started, or it has been stopped after running for some period of time. In this state, you can start, edit, or delete it. Syncing: The migration batch has been started, and mailboxes in the migration batch are being actively migrated. When a migration batch is in this state, you can stop it. Stopping: Immediately after you run Stop-MigrationBatch cmdlet. Starting: Immediately after you run Start-MigrationBatch cmdlet. Completing: Immediately after you run Complete-MigrationBatch cmdlet. Removing: Immediately after you run Remove-MigrationBatch cmdlet. Synced: The migration batch has completed an initial sync of the data. A migration batch in this state may contain errors if mailboxes weren't migrated. For most types of migrations, the remote/on-premises mailboxes and the corresponding Microsoft 365 or Office 365 mailboxes are synchronized every 24 hours during incremental synchronization. Completed: The migration batch is complete. Synced with errors: The migration batch has completed an initial sync of the data, but some mailboxes failed migration. Mailboxes that were successfully migrated in migration batches with errors are still synchronized every 24 hours during incremental synchronization.Percentage syncedIndicates the percentage of mailboxes that were successfully migrated in migration batches.TotalIndicates the number of mailboxes in the migration batch.SyncedIndicates the number of mailboxes that were successfully migrated.FinalizedThe number of mailboxes in the migration batch that have been finalized. Finalization is performed only for migration batches for remote move migrations in an Exchange hybrid deployment. For more information about the finalization process, see Complete-MigrationBatch.FailedThe number of mailboxes in the migration batch for which the migration failed. You can display information about specific mailboxes that have migration errors. For more information, see Migration users status report.Important
Migration batches with a status of Synced that have no administrator-initiated activity (for example, no administrator has stopped and restarted a migration batch or edited a migration batch) for the last 60 days will be stopped. All batches with Stopped or Failed status will be removed after 90 days. All batches with Completed status will be removed after 60 days.
Exchange Outlook Anywhere: The migration batch is either a cutover Exchange migration or a staged Exchange migration. ExchangeRemoteMove: The migration batch is either an onboarding or offboarding remote move migration in an Exchange hybrid deployment. Gmail: The migration batch is a Google Workspace migration.DirectionIndicates if mailboxes are being migrated to Microsoft 365 or Office 365 or to your on-premises Exchange organization. Onboarding: Indicates that mailboxes are being migrated to Microsoft 365 or Office 365. Onboarding migration types are staged migrations, cutover migrations, IMAP migrations, Google Workspace migrations, and onboarding remote move migrations. Offboarding: Indicates that Microsoft 365 or Office 365 mailboxes are being migrated to your on-premises Exchange organization. Offboarding remote move migrations are the only type of offboarding migration.StatusThe current state of the selected migration batch. Completed Syncing Stopped Synced Synced with errors See the previous description of each of these states.View detailsClick View details to display status information for each mailbox in the migration batch. For more information, see Migration users status report.Synced mailboxesThe number of mailboxes out of the total number of mailboxes in the migration batch that have successfully completed initial synchronization. This field is updated during the migration.Finalized mailboxesThe number of mailboxes out of the total number of mailboxes in the migration batch that have successfully been finalized. Finalization only occurs in onboarding and offboarding remote move migrations.Failed mailboxesThe number of mailboxes that failed initial synchronization.Created byThe email address of the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 administrator who created the migration batch.Created timeThe date and time when the migration batch was created.Start timeThe date and time when the migration batch was started.Complete afterThe date and time when the migration batch is completed.Last synced timeThe last time the migration batch was restarted or the last time that incremental synchronization was performed for the batch. As previously stated, incremental synchronization occurs every 24 hours.Associated endpointThe name of the migration endpoint being used by the migration batch. You can click View details to view the migration endpoint settings. You can also edit the settings if none of the migration batches using the endpoint are currently running.The Migration dashboard for Classic Exchange admin center (Classic EAC) 041b061a72