Accelerating Avaya to Webex Migrations with Structured Runbooks

Over the years working on Avaya estates and Webex Contact Center deployments, one lesson has stayed with me: the migrations that go smoothest are the ones where every decision is written down before it's needed.

These days I document every migration as a single path of seven phases. Each phase ends at a gate, and whatever a phase produces becomes the input for the next one. Here is that path, stage by stage.

01. Business requirements

Everything starts with what the business needs the contact center to do. Written down and signed off, this becomes the acceptance contract every later phase is measured against.

02. Prerequisites

Before design starts, I confirm the foundations and extract the full Avaya estate — including the routing intent behind every vector, VDN, and skill, with a named owner for each.

03. Design mapping

Each Avaya component maps to its Webex-native counterpart. I design from the intent, so this is also the moment to simplify anything the business no longer needs.

04. Feature gap bridging

My favourite phase. Any two platforms will have differences — what matters is that every gap gets a written decision with an owner and a revisit date, so nothing is left open at go-live.

05. Implementation

Every configuration item carries the same three fields, and I consider it complete only when its evidence is filed. Weeks later, anyone can confirm what was tested straight from the runbook.

06. Cutover

Cutover night runs a rehearsed, minute-by-minute sequence. Each gate has pass criteria agreed in advance and a scripted rollback — having the way back written down is what lets the team take the go decision with confidence.

07. Operations

Hypercare runs against written KPI thresholds. Once they're met, the platform hands over to operations — and the runbooks hand over with it, becoming the day-2 procedures.

Where AI fits in

Producing this depth of documentation used to need a dedicated writing team. Today I bring the architecture decisions, gate criteria, and platform experience, and Claude helps me draft at scale — chapter templates, checklists, and the per-site variations that take real time by hand. Every page then passes a strict build check before anything gets published.

Explore the full framework

Every phase above exists as a complete, navigable documentation site — the workbooks, mapping tables, gap register, evidence-field procedures, cutover runbook, and handover pack. It's built as an illustrative enterprise scenario, so the structure and decision logic are fully visible for anyone who wants to learn from it or adapt it.