Phases of Data migration: Analysis

This is probably the trickiest part of the project. It all depends upon how well you know your data!

In an earlier post, I had outlines the characteristics of good data. Focus on the following items in your analysis.

* Completeness,
* Conformity,
* Consistency,
* Accuracy,
* Duplicates, and
* Integrity

Based on your scope, try and identify all the sources of data (business systems like ERP, CRM, MES, PLM, document management systems etc.). Once you have the source identified, identify the quality of data.

If you have business analysts on your team, put them to work to

(1) document business rules and logic in source and target systems

(2) document gaps in data conformity to existing business rules and business processes

(3) document duplicates and plan of action to address duplicates

(4) document data integrity gaps and plan of action

(5) document plan to map data from source to target systems

Your business users should be assigned to

(1) assess completeness of data

(2) assess impact of data mapping

(3) assess data quality issued reported by business analysts

Based on the two bodies of work, you will have a good idea as to whether you need to clean your data prior to the move! In my experience, you will have some tough choices to make: Clean source data or design your extraction utilities to account for the cleansing actions!

I would recommend focusing on this aspect. “Garbage In is Garbage Out”

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