> Markdown version of [/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1167-the-migration](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1167-the-migration). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md).

---

# The Migration Cookbook


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 16:50–17:20 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 2
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100164-the-migration-cookbook)

## Description

Enterprise migrations are hard:  The new platform is usually not quite ready yet, nobody fully knows what the old tool did, management wants everything to be done by yesterday, and your users don’t want their favorite toys taken away.

That’s why there is an entire scientific field devoted to “change management.”  In this talk, we will explore how its lessons apply to the real world:
- Why are migrations so painful, and what are some common patterns?
- What are some of the proven techniques to avoid (or at least: limit) tears during migrations?
- Which technical approaches can power our wonderful migration plans?
- What are some of the policies and governance models to streamline these processes?
- How to not lose the fun while doing all of this?

Robert draws on a decade of shepherding tens of thousands of internal users from a fragmented tool landscape, through multiple sunsets and deprecations, to a unified monitoring platform at Google SRE.

## Speaker

### [Robert Lehmann](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@robert-lehmann)

Staff Engineer at ex-Google


## Related talks at this congress

- [You Will Migrate Eventually: A developer approach to technology adoption](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/977-you-will-migrate) — Luisa Rink, Wouter Ligtenberg
- [Swapping a Data Warehouse at Runtime: Zero-Downtime Migration Without Changing a Single Client](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1345-swapping-a-data) — Max Fischer, Michael O'Toole
- [5 Years in Cloud Native: The Good, the Bad, and the Bill](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1112-5-years-in-cloud) — Simone Desantis
- [Confessions of a Software Archaeologist: What I Did Wrong in 10 Years of Restructuring Software](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1270-confessions-of-a) — Hendrik Lösch