Chelsea Moore, Client Success Manager, was the project manager for our recent migration of 1,200+ SQL Server databases. The technical execution was impressive—it was done with fewer than three hours of downtime and created an 84% drop in storage costs. In our Q&A, Chelsea shares how she helped steer the project to success through clear communication, thoughtful structuring, and the kind of calm leadership that makes even the biggest projects feel seamless.

The Power of Preparation

Q: When did planning for this migration begin, and what were the first logistical steps?

Planning began in October 2024. The client came to The SERO Group with a vision for their upgraded environment, but through discovery, the team found that their initial plan didn’t completely align with their performance or budget goals. They worked collaboratively to reframe the direction—resulting in a more streamlined architecture that exceeded expectations.

This planning phase, which extended into January 2025, was the longest portion of the project. “We spent 12 weeks just on planning and design,” Chelsea said. “That set the stage for everything that followed.”

Q: What helped you most in managing such a large effort?

Chelsea points to a foundational resource: The SERO Group’s standardized migration checklist and project template. “Even though every migration is different, having that predefined framework let me focus on strategic decisions instead of just sequencing tasks. It gave us the structure to stay on track and the flexibility to tailor it to the client’s needs.”

Building Trust Through Communication

Q: Were there any communication challenges? How did you overcome them?

The client had faced delays during previous migrations and understandably wanted to prevent any possible issues during this one. To address their concerns, Chelsea worked on establishing transparency and leaning into structured collaboration.

“We started with biweekly calls but increased the frequency to weekly as we neared execution,” she explained. These weren’t working sessions—they were status checkpoints where decisions were made, issues were raised, and next steps were confirmed.

Q: How were the client’s teams kept informed during the maintenance windows?

Because some stakeholders weren’t able to join every live call, Chelsea adapted her tools mid-project. “I moved our tracking from Monday.com to Excel so I could easily take screenshots of our live checklist and post them in Teams. That way, everyone—whether on the call or not—knew exactly where we were.”

Structuring for Execution

Q: What did the final 48 hours before the first migration look like?

Two days before the first migration, Chelsea organized and led a formal Go/No-Go call. The team reviewed all open action items and confirmed that nothing would delay the plan. At the end of the meeting, Chelsea asked everyone directly, “Is there any risk that would make us postpone?”

This clarity, paired with a culture of open communication, ensured that no assumptions were left unaddressed. If anyone had a concern, it would be brought to light and resolved before the cutover began.

Q: How did you keep the actual migration on track?

“We captured start and stop times for each task,” she said. “That helped us measure not just overall duration, but exactly how long each part took, which helped refine our estimates for the next weekend.” In the end, that discipline paid off: each weekend ran smoother than the last. The final and largest group of databases migrated in under three hours—faster than either of the previous weekends.

Finishing Strong

Q: What advice would you give someone managing a project like this for the first time?

“Don’t try to know everything,” Chelsea said. “Let your technical leads own the technical side. My job wasn’t to understand every backup script—it was to make sure Luke had what he needed to be successful.”

She also emphasized the importance of asking questions, even if they seem obvious. “You’re not helping the project by staying quiet when something doesn’t feel right. Ask the thing no one else is asking—someone may have forgotten, or it may spark a helpful discussion.”

Q: What did the final close-out meeting look like?

It wasn’t just a victory lap. Chelsea began by checking in on the environment—was everything still running smoothly? (It was.) The client reported their CPU usage had dropped by 5–10% across the board, a measurable performance win. Then she walked through a structured project retrospective: what went well, what could be improved, and what needed follow-up.

“We wanted to make sure every open item had a home,” Chelsea said. “Whether that was a new ticket, a follow-up project, or something handed off to our SeroShield monitoring team.”

The Intangibles of Success

Q: What moment made you feel the proudest?

“That final weekend,” she said without hesitation. “It had the most databases and took the least amount of time. It felt like all of our work to get more efficient each weekend really paid off.”

Q: What is something that readers of the technical post may not yet appreciate about this migration?

“The amount of back-end coordination,” she said. “It was 12 weeks of planning before the first database ever moved. That’s what made it feel easy.”

Q: What does this project say about The SERO Group?

“We show up as true partners. We walk alongside the client and make decisions together. That’s what builds trust—and that’s why this went so well.”

Bringing It All Together

This migration was a case study in how proactive project management, thoughtful communication, and structured planning can bring clarity and confidence to even the most complex technical challenges. Chelsea didn’t just get the job done—she also made it feel calm, transparent, and collaborative every step of the way.

If your organization is facing a high-stakes SQL Server migration, don’t underestimate the power of strong project management. Schedule a no-obligation discovery call with us to learn how we can help.

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A work environment like The Office where an obtuse boss unknowingly stifles productivity and routinely kills morale makes for a funny sit-com. That series is one of my all-time favorite television shows. However, when fiction becomes reality, it’s not so funny. I’ve seen work environments every bit as dysfunctional as the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin. When an obvious choice had to be made, you could count on the boss to make the exact wrong decision.

When our work environments become tough, it’s easy to feel like we are victims in a bad situation with little hope for a better future. Often we fixate on the brokenness of the circumstances and allow it to rob us of contentment both at work and outside of work.

However, you do have choice. You have options.

Choose to Accept

Disappointment and discontented are rooted in our expectations. When we anticipate one thing and receive something else, our expectations are not met and we’re frequently unhappy about it. We can continue to set ourselves up for disappointment by hoping that the circumstances or people will somehow magically change, but that’s only setting ourselves up for more discontentment.

So, you can choose to accept it. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to condone it. But you can acknowledge that this is simply the way it is and stop mentally fighting it.

You can get annoyed that the boss shows up 10 minutes late for her own meeting. Or you can expect it and use those ten minutes to catch up on email. You can get aggravated that someone frequently avoids on-call duty. Or you can do your job and allow him to reap what he sows in the long run.

Choose to Change It

Often we have far more influence than we know. We may not have the positional power to change something, but we can influence those around us by our presence, our demeanor, our actions, and our words. You can influence others by asking questions, making suggestions, or having a good attitude. If we stop viewing the situation as utterly hopeless and look for opportunities to improve things, we empower ourselves to create a better future.

One way to do this is remove yourself from the situation. Image that a friend or colleague has come to you with this problem. Describe it to yourself as if the friend was telling you of his woes at work. What advice would you give? What counsel would you provide?

Choose to Leave

Sometimes the environment or situation is so caustic or so bad that you have no choice but to extricate your from it. You must leave it for your own sanity. If that’s the case, begin taking concrete steps toward that goal. Look for a job with another team or with another company. Get your resume ready, study for certification exams, and begin networking at user group meetings. These simple actions help give you hope in the short term and will offer a path to remove you from the environment that’s causing so much grief.

You Have a Choice

As leadership guru Stephen Covey said in his timeless classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we have the ability to choose. Proactive people are “response-able.” They are able to choose their response to their environment and they focus on the things they can control. They don’t waste time and energy on the things they cannot control. It’s Habit 1 of the Seven Habits.

Knowing that you have a choice is liberating. It’s empowering. It provides hope for a better future.

Choose.

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As we enter the last quarter of 2014, I’m reminded of a story by Mike Greene that I read recently in the Business Journals (check it out here).

Paraphrasing, the story went something like this:

A man walked into an old country store late one afternoon. As he wandered around looking at the merchandise, he was occasionally interrupted by a low moan coming from behind the end of the cash register counter. He continued to peruse the shelves until his curiosity finally got the better of him. He approached the counter and asked the store owner about the sound.

The owner nodded his head toward the floor where an old dog lay sleeping. “He’s napped there every day for the past several years. So much so that he’s worn the wooden floor down and an old rusty nail pokes him in the side as he sleeps,” offered the store owner.

The man looked questioningly at the dog and then at the store owner and wondered aloud, “Why doesn’t he just get up and move to another spot?”

“Good question,” replied the owner, “as much as it hurts him, I guess it’s not enough to do anything about it.”

The end of the year is traditionally a time to reflect on the prior year and to set goals for the next 12 months. As you consider the direction you’d like to take in 2015, spend some time thinking about the things you’ve been living with and ask yourself, “Do I hurt enough to change, to actually do something about it?”

It may mean making a career move or signing up for training to expand your knowledge. Maybe it’s seeking out a mentor to help you navigate the difficulties or uncertainties in life. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Whatever it is, resolve that come next December, you’ll be able to look back with a sense of accomplishment and pride in what you’ve done.

photo courtesy of freeimages.com

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Hiring the wrong person is costly. There are the hard costs associated with the search as well as delayed projects, lowered morale, and expensive employee benefits. Yet many companies do not have a well-defined and comprehensive interviewing process. They leave it up to individual managers to make hiring decisions while neglecting to provide sufficient guidance or training on what to look for in a candidate.

Often managers place considerable weight, too much weight perhaps, on technical skills while largely ignoring the other aspects required for success. You’ve probably heard the saying “People are hired for their technical abilities; they are fired a lack of people skills.” That’s often true.

Not long ago I wrote about the 3 C’s that I look for when interviewing technical people: Competence, Compatibility, and Core Values (Character). You can read about them here.  I’ve recently added another characteristic that deserves to be included with the 3 C’s.

The 4th C is Coachable.

Is the person open to constructive feedback? Does he want to improve? Or does he “know it all” already?

Being coachable means the person is humble and has a teachable spirit, that he is willing to accept that there may be other or better ways of doing things. Coachable does not mean overly impressionable or being unduly swayed like a ship without a rudder. Rather it means they are professional and confident in their abilities. Yet they recognize that everyone can improve and they yearn to get better, to be the best.

So, when interviewing for your next direct report, ask questions that reveal coachability. That, along with the other C’s, will help you to select the best addition to your team.

photo courtesy of freeimages.com

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Series Outline

• So I Got Promoted, Now What?
• Stop Doing Your Old Job
• Employ the Same Successful Tactics
• Get to Know Your Peers
• Get a Trusted System
• Manage Your Email
• Manage Your Calendar
• Start Having Weekly One-On-Ones
• Recognize the Tendency to Revert

Your Hard Work Has Paid Off

You’ve work hard over the past few years, going the extra mile to make sure that everything in your charge has gone well. You’ve managed your individual and team projects well; you’ve organized your work and developed a personal discipline so that nothing has fallen through the cracks. And now your hard work has finally paid dividends. You’ ve been recognized with a promotion. So now what do you do?

This is a question that many highly skilled, highly technical people ask themselves once the euphoria of increased pay and acknowledgement has worn off.

Unfortunately, many don’t pursue the answer long enough to find it. Instead they get mired down into the daily routine of their new role and never explore how they could better prepare to succeed. Many languish in mediocrity at best, and fail at worst.

So what’s the first thing you need to do?

Stop Doing Your Old Job

Stop doing your old job. To many, this may sound too obvious to mention. If you are promoted to a new position, why would you want to continue doing your old job as well as the new one? Isn’t one job enough?

Unfortunately, in many cases it’s just not that discrete. Often the promotion is a “working promotion.” You’ve been promoted to Senior DBA, to Development Team Lead, to Manager of the Administration Team, or to Director of Operations. The promotion comes with a new title, an increase in pay, and some new responsibilities. However, you find that in addition to your new duties, you are still accountable for many of the same tasks you had before your promotion.

To be successful in your new role, you will need to approach it with the same fervor and dedication that led to your promotion. You won’t be able to do that if effectively if you are spending a significant amount of your time doing your old job. Something has to give and it had better be the old job.

“But, It’s Not My Job”

To be clear, I’m not advocating that you tell your boss “It’s not my job anymore.” when he asks you about something that was your direct responsibility prior to the promotion. They don’t want to hear that. And besides, unless your promotion has moved you to a completely new department, that task still falls under your purview. And it’ll remain your responsibility until you’re told specifically otherwise or your replacement can be found.

So, in order to stop doing your old job, you’ll need to identify people who can successfully step into the role you once occupied, or at least take on many of the responsibilities. This can be done through a series of progressively larger and more impacting steps: assign immediate tasks, delegate small projects, and create a growth plan for your team.

Assign Immediate Tasks

Many of us have daily, weekly, or even monthly tasks that require our time and attention. There are backups to verify, meetings to attend, status reports to create, numbers to run, and logs to review, to name but a few. None of these are particularly urgent. Many are not high profile. But all need to be done.

In your prior role, you probably handled each of these at part of your job. Those responsibilities were commiserate with your level. In your new role, however, many of those activities will drain one of the most precious resources you have: your time. If you can safely offload those discrete yet repetitive tasks to one or your team members, you’ll potential free several hours per week.

Delegate Small Projects

The next step is to begin delegating some of the projects for which you are responsible. Start small and work your way up. Don’t begin with a large, complex project with multiple moving parts requiring input from numerous colleagues. Start with a small, fairly self-contained project that can be accomplished without  much outside input. Expect to work closely with the team member to whom you’ve delegated the project.

Initially, delegating will not free up your time. On the contrary, it will likely consume more of your time in the short-term than if you just did it yourself. But the payoff is just around the corner, just a few months down the road. As you get better at delegating and your team learns how to run with the delegated projects, you’ll be able to do more and more. Delegation is a force multiplier once you pay the initial start up costs in time.

Create a Growth Plan for Your Team

The best people have a knack for bringing out the best in other people. They somehow get others to perform and exceed even their own expectations. You want those kind of people on your team. And if you want them on your team, you can bet that your boss wants them on his team, too.

One way to bring out the best in other people is to consciously and intentionally create a growth plan for each of them. Talk with them. Learn their aspirations. Discover their likes and dislikes. Create a plan to help  them grow professionally, technically, and interpersonally. In short, you’d eventually like for them to easily step into your shoes once you get promoted again.

Ifs, Ands, and Buts

But isn’t all this risky? Won’t one of your team members take your job? Or won’t they get promoted out from under you?

Fostering an environment where you can be more effective while growing your people is not “risky.” In fact, a good argument can be made for just the opposite. Not growing your team is risky. Creating an environment where personal growth is not evident, where the same old routine is done day in and day out, is far riskier to you than growing your team. The best people won’t want to stay in that environment. You’ll be left with the mediocre.

One of the best compliments you can be paid as a manager is to have one of your team members promoted to a new position. It’s speaks well of the environment you’ve created. And when that happens again and again, senior management will recognize your role in producing highly effective people.

And when you get promoted, you’re next transition will be easier because you’ll have already cultivated your replacement.

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That’s the premise of Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley. In it, Stanley contends that we are all far too busy. We have too many commitments at work and at home; we’re stretched too thin, being pulled in every direction. There’s no way we’ll accomplish everything. Sound familiar?

So Many Things, So Little Time

So what do we do? We try as hard as we can. We spend a few extra hours at work to try to get caught up, cheating our family of that time. We take a long lunch or call in sick to get some personal things done, cheating work.

But we still come up short. No matter how hard we try, some things will be left undone. There’s just too much to do. We can’t do it all. We will miss some commitments that we’ve made. The only question is which ones.

Who Are Cheating?

For many of us, the two largest sources of commitments come from work and family. Think about those for a moment.

At work, you are replaceable. As good as you may be at your job, you’re still replaceable. If you quit, they will find another person to do your job. If you do your job poorly, they’ll fire you. If business becomes slow, they’ll lay you off. The company has very little, if any, loyalty to you as an individual. Yet many of us have great loyalty to our work. We work long hours, often burning the midnight oil, in the hopes of getting caught up or being recognized for a promotion.

Conversely, at home, no one else can fill your shoes. You are the only husband or wife that your spouse has. Only you can be the mother or father to your kids. No one else can fill your role. And your family has nearly unlimited loyalty to you.

Yet when push comes to shove, many of us choose to cheat our family rather than work. We choose to devote extra time to the entity that has zero loyalty to us while robbing those that have nearly unlimited loyalty to us. We focus on areas where we are replaceable at the expense of areas where we’re irreplaceable. We choose to spend our time doing things that will be obsolete in five short years while cheating in areas where our impact may be felt for a lifetime or even longer.

Why? And what could we, should we do about it?

Making A Conscious Choice

In Choosing To Cheat, Stanley tackles this problem. He doesn’t pretend to have easy answers. But he does call your attention to the problem and offer some creative ways to approach your work and home life. I definitely learned a lot from the book.

It’s a short, easy read. You can easily finish it in one sitting or on a short flight. But it can be life changing if read with an openness and taken to heart. I have a good friend who would say that it literally helped to saved his marriage.

So, if you’re cheating, are you choosing wisely?

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You wouldn’t believe some of the systems and processes I’ve seen over the course of my 16 years as a consultant.

Some people know that they have a horrible patchwork of broken systems that are loosely held together by duct tape and bubble gum. Others think their system is “flexible except for this one issue we’d like for you to fix.” I’ve learned that one man’s flexibility is another’s bad design.

Fortunately experience begets familiarity and some of the issues I see are remarkably similar to ones that I’ve solved in the past.

It’s tempting to show them just how smart I am and immediately jump to the solution. In fact, cutting to the chase would save them time and money so everybody wins. Except there’s only one problem: I didn’t listen.

You’ve Got To Listen

Listening is incredibly important, not only for consultants, but for everyone. Regardless of your walk in life, being an good listener will help you as you work with other people. Listening helps people to feel understood, to feel that you care. And that goes a long way in building a relationship.

Conversely, if you don’t take the time to listen, other people don’t feel understood. You’re not listening, so you simply cannot understand what’s going on. They assume you don’t care or that you’re just too self-centered. Without a good understanding of the problem, they reason, how can you possibly offer a good solution?

So before you offer a solution, take some time to stop, drop, and roll.

Stop

Don’t interrupt their description of the problem. Let them tell it to you in all its glory, even if you’ve heard it all before. It’s important to them to tell it.

Most people feel their situations are unique and quite different than the problems you may have faced in the past. Let them tell you why. In fact, you may actually learn that their problem is subtly yet significantly different that what you were expecting.

Two rules to keep in mind. First don’t interrupt. If the other person is talking, be quiet. You can nod your head in agreement or smile when appropriate, but don’t say anything. Second, when the other person has stopped talking, count to 5 to make sure that he is really finished and not just regrouping his thoughts. Only then do you know it’s your turn to talk.

Drop

Drop a few clarifying questions back to the other person. Ask them to explain in more detail or from another perspective. Many people will focus solely on the immediate affects of the issue or what they deem as pertinent. If you delve a little deeper you can uncover a lot more information. Asking relevant questions also reassures them that you are listening.

Don’t limit yourself to abstract or technical questions. Ask them about the impact of what they are describing. How is this situation affecting them personally? How has the problem affected their job or other’s perception of them?

Getting personal helps you to understand their motives. This is especially powerful when talking with a prospective client.

Roll

Roll back what you hear them saying. Restate their problem and its affects. Summarizing or restating what they’ve told you helps makes sure that you, do indeed, understand their issue. It also communicates to them that you understand.

This also helps to transition the conversation. It’s moving from their turn to talk to your turn. They’ve described the problem, now it’s your turn to offer suggestions or recommendations.

Solve

After they have completely described their scenario to their satisfaction, then you are free to offer your guidance. Your initial assessment may have been right on, but they wouldn’t have listened to you since you didn’t listen to them. Listening cost you only a few more minutes of time and the rewards were definitely worth it.

So, the next time you’re visiting a prospective new client or someone approaches you with a problem, remember: Stop, Drop, and Roll.

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One of the hardest lessons to learn and put into practice is that of Real Cost versus Opportunity Cost. Let’s consider an example.

Real Cost

Real Cost is straightforward. If the water pipes in my house freeze and burst due to the cold weather, I can fix the leak myself or I can call a professional plumber. Those are my options. Sure, I could do without running water, but I’m fond of modern conveniences. So, let’s say I want to fix the leak.

Which is the better option – fixing the leak myself or hiring a professional? Assuming I have the know-how, fixing the leak myself sounds less expensive. In terms of Real Cost it is.

When I repair the bursted pipes myself, my only outlay is for the supplies required to stop the water from squirting out. I’ll need to run down to the hardware store to buy some replacement pipe and perhaps a couple of shiny new tools. That’s the extent of my Real Costs. Then I can roll up my sleeves and dive into the repairs.

If I call a plumber to come to my house and do the job for me, I don’t have to go to the hardware store. I don’t have to buy the materials myself. And I don’t have to find and fix the leak. But I do have to pay him to do these things for me. I have to pay for his time plus the materials he uses to remedy the problem.

So, calling a professional costs me time and materials whereas doing it myself costs only materials.

But that’s not really a complete picture. There’s an Opportunity Cost associated with the project.

Opportunity Cost

If I spend three hours repairing the ruptured pipes, that’s three hours that I’m not doing something else like working for my clients or spending time with my family. The things that I give up by not choosing them are the Opportunity Costs.

There are Opportunity Costs associated with every decision you make. Choosing one thing, by definition, will come at the expense of another.

In this case, the Opportunity Cost of fixing the burst pipes is the time I spend doing the work myself. A professional plumber can probably do the job in half that time. So from an economic perspective, I’m spending time doing something that I’m only marginally skilled at instead of focusing on areas where I’m more skilled. That’s underutilizing my effectiveness.

So in effect, I am paying for time and materials even when I do the job myself. I’m paying with my time rather than buying the plumber’s time. So the question becomes: how much is my time worth to me?

Unless the plumber charges twice my hourly rate or I don’t actually have the client work to do instead of fixing the broken pipes, it actually costs me less to pay someone else to do the job.

Applying The Calculation To Business

Real Costs versus Opportunity Costs apply to business as well. For example, should I outsource part of a project to another consultant?

Let’s say I’m a database consultant and I’m somewhat skilled in application development. I can do the application development work, but my area of expertise is in the database. Spending time developing the front end application is not a good use of my time. Someone else can do it better and faster than me. I should focus on the things that I do well.

The same goes for bookkeeping, web site development, and making reservations.

The concept also applies to managers and their team. If a manager does something that he could have delegated to a team member, it’s actually costing the organization. He could have delegated the task and had someone else do it, allowing him to focus on the things that only he can do.

There’s More To The Story

We must remember, however, that not all decisions are solely based on finances. Spending time with my family, working on the fence in the pasture, and volunteering as a Scout Leader all have Opportunity Costs associated with them. Despite being intangible, the results are well worth it. I’m not going to outsource some things.

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