Resources

Data Migration Readiness Checklist

Six stages and 31 checks for the months before a data migration goes live, each stage with one line on why it matters. Use it before you commit to a go-live date and again at each stage gate: any item you cannot answer with a document, a date or a number is where the risk is. It is adapted from my own migration playbook, and it is a direct download — no form, no email address.

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PDF · 4 pages · A4 · 101 KB · no sign-up

What's inside

Six stages, 31 checks.

Each stage has short items you can tick off, and the gate at the end of it decides go or no-go. These are the six stages and why each one matters; the PDF closes with five questions to ask of any migration plan.

Scope and profiling

Estimates built on a count of tables rather than on profiled data are where migration schedules usually break, at cleansing or user acceptance testing, after the date is already committed.

Mapping

Transformation rules written from documentation or assumption surface as misclassified records after go-live, when the fix means correcting production data and rebuilding users' trust.

Data quality

The source keeps changing after you profile it. Without a re-check, the data you tested is not the data you cut over.

Test and reconcile

A job that finished without errors is not evidence that the data is right. Tests on samples miss rare historical values and the effects of scale, and without automated reconciliation, differences are found by users weeks later with nothing left to trace them back to.

Cutover

Without numeric triggers agreed in advance, the choice between pushing on and rolling back is made under pressure in the middle of the night, and sunk cost usually wins.

After go-live

A migration ends when the old system is switched off, not at go-live. Until then you pay for two systems, and some users keep entering data in the old one.

Download the PDF (101 KB)

Integration & Migration Review

If a migration is coming and you want an independent read before you commit to a date, the Integration & Migration Review is a fixed-scope review built for that point. EthanCorp designs and runs data integration, analytics and AI automation systems for organisations that need their fragmented data to be trustworthy, built as durable systems, not demos. The review profiles your source systems as they actually run today, ranks the failure points by business impact, and produces a first source-to-target mapping for the domain that matters most.

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