Data migration is a process to ensure business stability in the newly implemented system.
The data migration process has always both technical and functional aspects. Due to implementation of the new system is the client usually going through the business transformation and business process changes which might result in data cleansing and enrichment requirements as a prerequisite for the data migration.
Data migration needs to be understood as a repetitive process running in cycles and not as a one-time activity at the end of the implementation.
Data Migration Cycle usually consists of following steps:
- Cleansing
- Extraction
- Field & Value Mapping
- Transformation
- Load
- Reconciliation
- Sign-off
Number of cycles is defined based on the project life-cycle and usually follows the main project phases.
Data Migration Scope
The migration scope has several major aspects. It is essential to identify all data sources and all relevant migration objects, but as well how deep history of data is necessary to be migrated to the target system.
Strategy & Process
After the initial assessment of the scope and landscape technical migration strategy needs to be developed. Depending on the nature of the source systems and applications several technical strategies can be applied.
The most recommended approach is to leverage migration tool which comes together with out of box solution for data migration i.e. migration tool for selected and the most common migration objects. This usually comes together with ready to use migration templates. Based on these templates several key activities can be driven such field and value mapping, but as well as the cleansing requirements.
Migration strategy shall cover also the basic sequence of loading activities for all objects in scope. The following diagram shows generic flow of data migration cycle:
Roles and Responsibilities (R&R/RACI)
It is also very important to identify key people involved in the data migration process and based on the list of data migration related activities se the responsibilities.