Data migration strategy overview

• 15 minutes

Typically, the Data migration strategy workshop is conducted remotely and includes several important areas of discussion. The following sections list some important areas, but these lists aren't exhaustive. Each project will have slightly different considerations.

Data management strategy

In the Data management strategy section of the workshop, you will review the data management strategy and identify roles and their responsibilities. Then, you will define how data will be prepared and validated later and which tools to use. Basically, this part of the workshop is an initial conversation to help gain understanding of the whole strategy around data migration.

Planning and strategy

The Planning and strategy section covers project timelines, who owns the data, and who will be responsible for all tasks around it (extraction, provision, cleansing, and importing). It’s important to review the type of data to bring into the solution and determine whether all that data is needed. Environments and tools are necessary in this conversation. Make sure that you know how many environments, and which ones, are included in the strategy and the tools in use.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as:

• Will user acceptance testing (UAT) be performed on migrated data?
• How many data migration cycles or dry runs will be conducted?
• Have data structures and relationships of your destination solution been defined?
• What are the types of environments in which data migration activities will take place?

Data volume

In the Data volume section, you should validate that the volume of data that is being migrated has been assessed. For a successful data migration, it is crucial to have a clear picture of the number of records that are being migrated from legacy systems into the new environment. In scenarios where you are migrating high volumes of data, knowing in advance the number of records that are involved, and understanding how the tool works, will save you time.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as:

• Which tables have the largest number of records?
• How will large volumes of data be synchronized initially for dual-write integration?

Tooling

The Tooling section is about the tools in use and about understanding the plan for using them. Different approaches and different stages are available to use, such as copying/synchronizing data between legal entities and copying data between environments. Make sure that you discuss how data will be extracted, transformed, and loaded back into the system.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as:

• Which tools will be used to move/copy/synchronize data between legal entities?
• Does everyone have a good understanding of the tools to be used during data migration?
• What will be the tool that is used for the data migration?

Performance

The Performance part of the data migration process is related to a better quality of data, faster cycles, and eventual, achievable cutover timing. As such, it is important to determine the best setup, technical and functional, for performance improvement and to conduct multiple rounds of tests to validate that setup.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as:

• What are the characteristics of the environment that is planned for data migration?
• Does the data migration plan include non-functional requirements?
• Has performance-related setup been considered and planned?

Data validation

Data validation is a mandatory step to ensure that migrated data is complete and aligned to the business requirements. The data validation must be well documented, with all necessary criteria defined.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as: What is the plan to validate the data after migration (data quality, data formatting, and so on)?

Testing

Testing the migrated data is essential to the entire data migration process. The aim is to ensure that the testing is thoroughly documented, that unit tests exist, and that the results are accounted for and transferred to the next data migration cycles.

This topic focuses on answering questions, such as:

• Have unit tests been defined for testing migrated data?
• How will the test results be documented?
• Is error handling planned and accounted for?