Lift and Shift
Verb Phrase · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
Moving a system from one environment to another with minimal redesign, usually trading speed for deeper modernization. In engineering slang, lift-and-shift approaches are common because they are faster than reinvention, but they also move old problems into new homes.
In plain English: Moving a system to a new environment mostly as-is, without major redesign.
Example: "The first cloud migration was a lift and shift, which bought time quickly but preserved many of the same operational assumptions that had made the old setup fragile."