SERVICES
MIGRATION PROCESSING -
PROJECT MANAGEMENT -
CONSULTANCY -
SUPPLIER LIAISON -
TESTING -
RECONCILIATION -
OTHER DATA SERVICES -
MIGRATION
EXPERIENCE
CASE STUDIES
To the extent that a data migration is a project, with a start date, an end date,
tasks, resources and costs, the guiding principles of project management apply. However, data migrations have some fundamental differences from other system implementation projects, making traditional I.T. project management techniques
less applicable. Migration does not always fit well into the standard model of a systems development project, with discrete phases for analysis, design,
programming and testing.
Whilst the tasks in a system development project are naturally determined by the areas of functionality being developed, a data migration project is shaped by the data items to be converted. A surprisingly effective project plan can be devised simply by adding columns to the relevant data dictionaries, to identify the following for each
data item:
- who is specifying / coding / testing the data mapping
- estimated effort required for each task
- priority
- dependency (if any) on other data items.
Thus the data dictionary can be used alongside traditional project management tools such as Microsoft Project, which are most useful in two areas:
- maintenance of a high-level project plan, for both practical and presentational
- purposesplanning the logistics of migration i.e. detailed scheduling of tasks hour by hour, possibly minute by minute, during the execution phase.
The essence of data migration is attention to detail, down to the last bit in the last byte. The same should apply to the management of the project. ATD fully appreciates the particular requirements of running a data migration, especially as our consultants have experience of managing traditional I.T. projects and data migrations within the same organisation.
