Any data migration will be a greater or lesser part of an overall change to an organisation. However important the data migration is, its successful completion will not guarantee success for the overall process of change. It is surprising how often
this apparent truism is overlooked – effectively leaving the organisation at the mercy of the technicians responsible for the migration.

Every data migration should have a sister project with the generic title “Business Transition”, to give formal recognition to the many non-I.T.-related tasks that have
to be carried out alongside the migration. Such business transition tasks fall into
two main categories:

1. Tasks required to facilitate the migration itself, such as:

• user acceptance testing of the migration and its effects on the organisation
• notifying customers, suppliers and third parties of the migration
  and its effect on them
• reconciliation of both financial and non-financial totals before and
  after the migration.

2. Tasks associated with the longer term management of the migrated data, such as:

• effecting changes to operational procedures
• rationalisation or redistribution of resources among operational departments,
  to reflect increases / decreases in throughput following the migration
• reconciliation of both financial and non-financial totals before and
  after the migration.

Data migration and business transition projects should be closely integrated,
and should have common reporting lines in order to optimise co-operation between the two workstreams.

ATD consultants have been heavily involved in the business transition activities associated with a number of large-scale data migrations. Whilst we recognise the
vital importance of attention to detail in all technical aspects of a data migration,
we are acutely aware that a migration project will fail if it does not support the business to which it applies, or if the business does not support it.