How to migrate abstract systems without losing volunteer committee trust.
The legacy abstract platform worked until it did not. Contracts renew, support slips, and the committee starts saying the portal timed out again during peak review.
The last migration attempt failed for a reason that had nothing to do with CSV columns: volunteers refused to learn a second system mid-cycle.
A society we migrated last season had binders of reviewer notes they were afraid to lose. The technical cutover was easy. Earning trust that old decisions were still visible took longer.
Phased cutover: read-only history in the old system, single write path for the upcoming cycle, training on workflows that mirror how chairs already think (tracks, scores, conflicts).
Successful migrations sequence people before pixels: committee champions, one pilot track, then the full program. Preserve decision history reviewers expect to cite. Trim admin clutter nobody opens.
Preserve reviewer-facing history (scores, decisions, comments). Trim admin clutter. Committees need continuity more than perfect schemas.
As short as possible. Ideally zero write dual-run. Read legacy for reference; write only in the new system for the upcoming CFP.
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