Why upgrades slip

A major version upgrade of a CMS is seldom difficult because of the CMS itself. The work hides in everything built around it: third-party modules without a compatible release, custom code that relied on internal behaviour, integrations nobody has opened in years, and content that only works because of an old quirk. Estimates made from release notes miss most of it.

Moving to a newer .NET version or to new hosting has the same shape. The code compiles and the tests pass; the problems appear under real content and real traffic.

The readiness report

Before you commit to a date, we run the upgrade on a copy of your solution and your data and measure what changes. The upgrade readiness report covers four things.

Dependencies. Every package and module, whether a compatible version exists, and what can replace the ones that do not.
Code. Breaking changes that touch your code, with an estimate for each area of the solution.
Content and data. Schema changes, content that fails to load or render, and how long the database step takes on your data volume.
Performance. The same pages and queries measured before and after.

The report ends with written go/no-go criteria: the conditions that must hold before you switch. The decision is yours, against criteria written down in advance.

The upgrade itself

Changes land in small steps on a branch that keeps building and passing its tests.
Dependencies with no compatible release are replaced or rewritten.
Where your hosting allows it, old and new run side by side and their responses are compared.
The cut-over is rehearsed on a copy, including the database step. Where that step cannot be reversed, we agree in writing what the way back is, usually a restore point, and what it would lose.

What we need from you

Read access to the source repository, a recent copy of the database and media (a masked copy is fine), and a contact who knows the integrations. How we look after that copy is described under your data.

What happens next

We agree the scope of the readiness report and fix its price and timing in writing. You receive the report and the go/no-go criteria, we go through them with your team, and you decide whether, when and with whom to upgrade.

Platforms

CMS upgrades on Optimizely and Umbraco. .NET version upgrades and hosting moves on any .NET system.

Upgrades and modernisation.