Five mistakes teams make with data migration
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. These are the ones we run into repeatedly when we audit data migration.
Data outlives the applications built on top of it, which is why the model deserves more thought than the screens. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
Where it usually goes wrong
- Treating it as a launch task rather than an ongoing one
- Assuming someone else already owns it
- Migrations fail on the data nobody knew existed
- Run it against a full copy before the real thing
- Never checking whether the fix actually worked
Always have a documented way back. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
Where to go from here
How to tell if yours is fine
Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. Three things worth confirming about data migration before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Run it against a full copy before the real thing — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.