Define the upgrade scope before any technical work begins: identify which teams and applications will be migrated, take inventory of existing classic Dynatrace configuration, and explicitly agree on what stays out of scope.
This stage prevents scope creep and misaligned expectations by establishing a shared, signed-off baseline: what gets upgraded, what gets retired, and what is deferred to a later phase.
Starting the upgrade without a defined scope leads to scope creep, misaligned expectations, and rework. A signed-off scoping baseline ensures budget and effort go where they deliver value, and that out-of-scope items are named, deferred, and assigned an owner before technical work begins.
This stage produces a signed-off scope baseline, the document that governs all technical decisions in the stages that follow.
Access to a Dynatrace Classic environment with admin or read-only export permissions.
| Role | Involvement | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
Dynatrace Admin | Required | Provides access to Dynatrace Classic environment, exports configuration, and validates inventory counts |
Project Sponsor | Recommended | Approves scope, confirms out-of-scope decisions, and signs off on success criteria |
Application Team Leads | Recommended | Confirm which apps and hosts fall under their team and flag known dependencies |
Integration Owners | Optional | Confirm disposition of third-party alerting and ITSM integrations (for example, ServiceNow, PagerDuty) |
Architect | Optional | Advises on migration strategy, disposition decisions, and success criteria definition |
Decide whether the upgrade targets a single team, a full environment, or multiple environments, and identify dependencies between teams that affect sequencing.
Verify: Scope document lists all in-scope teams, applications, and hosts, with a separate out-of-scope list that includes owner assignments and deferral reasons.
Prevent scope creep: stakeholders may add items mid-engagement without adjusting timeline or effort. Get written sign-off on the out-of-scope list before technical work begins.
Use the Check your upgrade readiness dashboard to catalogue existing classic assets and classify each one as migrate, retire, or defer.
Verify: Scope document signed off by the project sponsor, with all classic assets inventoried and classified before technical work begins.
Complete your classic inventory: undiscovered dashboards, alerting rules, or integrations that surface after migration starts force re-scoping and timeline slippage. Use the readiness dashboard to surface hidden assets before committing to a plan.
Stage complete when:
With your upgrade scope signed off and your classic configuration inventory complete, you're ready to start the technical work. The next stage is Enrich your observability signals: ensure every monitored signal carries the metadata that IAM boundaries, segments, and cost allocation all depend on. Enrichment is the foundation; it needs to be in place before any configuration upgrade begins.
The following resources support your work in this stage. Documentation covers platform concepts, configuration reference, and related guides; best practice cards provide implementation guidance from Dynatrace experts.
Best practices for scoping the upgrade to Latest Dynatrace
Define upgrade scope, run a pilot team end-to-end, and deliver a signed-off classic configuration inventory before technical work begins.
With your scope signed off and classic inventory complete, the next stage is to enrich your observability signals, the foundation all downstream stages depend on. Enrichment must be in place before any IAM, segmentation, or cost allocation configuration begins, so invest time here before moving forward.
Continue to Enrich your observability signals.