A mid-size financial institution needed to migrate core integration workloads off a decade-old ESB without a regulatory incident. The technical plan was sound; the social plan made it survivable.
Dual-run until operators vote
We ran old and new paths in parallel for three release cycles. Operators chose the cutover date — not the project plan. That single decision removed half the political resistance.
- Weekly steering with compliance present — no surprise audit findings.
- Reconciliation dashboards visible to business owners, not just engineers.
- Legacy decommission checklist signed by operations, not only engineering.
The migration finished two months ahead of schedule because we optimized for trust velocity, not ticket velocity.