Case Study - Planday Migration
Three devs built three migration flows over a weekend. Nobody knew which one was correct. This is what happens when governance is missing from the culture.
The Problem - What went wrong in reactive mode
When governance is missing, panic sets in. And panic leads to duplication.
Duplicate development
Three different teams (consultant, architect, engineering) built three different migration flows over a weekend.
No shared documentation
No contract definition, no transparent documentation. Each team worked in isolation.
Ad-hoc processing logic
Cosmos Connector was doing Planday-specific mapping — business logic in the wrong service.
Panic-driven PM management
Three people solving the same problem in parallel, with no coordination.
The Governance Gap - What was missing
No charter, no transparent documentation, panic-driven deadlines. These governance gaps led directly to the problem.
When governance is missing from the culture, you get:
- No Project Charter — no shared "north star"
- No transparent documentation — teams work in silos
- No DoR/DoD — no agreement on what "done" means
- Panic-driven deadlines — reactive instead of planned
What Governance-First Would Have Done - Clear contracts and shared understanding
With governance-first principles, this wouldn't have happened.
Clear contracts
Envelope response model defines what data looks like. Service Bus schema defines what messages look like.
Ownership boundaries
Cosmos Connector = data exposure only (neutral, no Planday logic). Planday Connector = consumption + transformation.
Audit & observability baked in
RU charges, elapsed times, correlation IDs logged automatically. Continuation tokens for resilience against big datasets.
Change management
Instead of three people coding, we'd be verifying "does the flow adhere to Governance-First standards?" Work becomes alignment, not duplication.
The Outcome - Single flow, shared understanding, no wasted weekends
The corrective principle: Align on DoR/DoD + publish migration design in Confluence before starting.
When governance is in the culture, you get:
- Single flow — one correct implementation
- Shared understanding — everyone knows what's being built
- No wasted weekends — no duplication, no rework
- Clear ownership — each service knows its boundaries
Cultural Outcome: Single flow, shared understanding, no wasted weekends.