Stakeholders view
Our software is for all stakeholders. It supports everyone in their role during a data migration project.
Managers, Project Leaders, Users, Business Analysts, or Technical Consultants all enjoy the support our software offers.
The stakeholder perspective
The support offered by migFx to all stakeholders during the data migration project allows them to focus on adding value to the overall project through targeted contributions and tasks.
People, process and tools
Our software is built on a strong methodology putting business and project objectives first.
It acknowledges that multiple stakeholders have different requirements and supports their roles and active participation in the data migration project.
Our approach is centred around the use of Business Objects – like a customer, an account, an order, etc. A non-technical terminology used to create a common point of reference for everyone on the project.
The iterative nature of our migration process emphasises an agile process of continuous improvements in mapping and validation that greatly enhance the quality and speed of the migration.
A team effort
Data Migrations still poses a significant challenge for many organisations. This is nothing new, but very little has been done to address this sad fact.
There are many reasons why this is still the case, but often practitioners:
- Underestimate the organisational readiness, their current data quality, their business data insight and expertise in data migration
- Have no clear data migration methodology or dedicated data migration tools available
- Have no experience and hence cannot size the project or identify the skills required
Taking advice from people who know and have experience with complex data migration is not a failure but a must.
Different project roles
Whats in it for me – I’m a:
As a manager, your role is to organise people and processes in the best possible way to ensure that the objectives of your organisation or project are achieved – be it in any combination of benefits, cost, time, and quality.
For a system change involving data migration, you need to define the overall strategy, scope, project organisation, and approach taken by the project.
Once the project is underway you need to follow its progress and be ready to make any changes necessary needed to steer it towards a successful outcome.
You need Management Information
Using our software will have direct access to management information that allows you to follow the current state and progress on mapping and outcome of any test iterations and migrations made.
As a Functional Consultant or Business Analyst your role is to:
- Identify the purpose of the transition within each functional area. What business need drives the migration and which outcomes the business needs to achieve. Document the requirements.
- Based on the requirements, distinguish which data do you need. It is good to identify the entities you need to migrate (e.g. customers, orders, accounts) and separately document any entities that you know you are going to leave behind.
- For each entity, figure out the attributes first. For example, what data do you need to migrate for a customer, what data do you need to migrate for an order, etc. How much history do you need?
- Identify data sources. Where can you pull those data elements from? Which systems?
- Define the transformation process. Think about how you transform the data from its current use and format to the target requirement for the same. Think about the manipulations and validation that need to happen to your data.
Many businesses that have relied on consultants or outsourced services do not have people who are sufficiently knowledgeable of the data and processes that resided in the systems they use.
The Functional Consultants role in data migration can not be overstated. It’s the most important role as you will at the detailed level.
Studio is built for you. Using Studio, you will be interacting with management and business users while documenting the data requirements, business rules, and validation needed within each functional area and for each entity that is being migrated.
It’s your responsibility that the requirements are understood and met by the data selections and mapping that is taking place.
It is the role of the Technical Consultant to assist the project with:
- Access to the source system data and knowledge of how to insert data into the target system
- Writing code to manipulate or enrich data as part of the data transformation
- Executing the data migration flow
- Managing the technical infrastructure
Using migFx you will be using/modifying our existing integrations to source data and target system interfaces or building new as required.
migFx provides you with the tools necessary for both building extensions, adding transformation code, and executing the migration.
Studio provides concise collaboration with the functional consultants driving your specifications. The Engine provides you with the code support and The Director is the execution manager.
The Engine provides your implementations rich access and intellisense to all the generated artifacts defined in the Studio.
As a Business User, you are at the receiving end of the data migration. You are expected to receive the benefits e.g. more functionality and better processes.
Your role in data migration is often to help the Functional Consultant articulate the detailed requirements and later to test how these have been met in the new system once your data has been migrated.
Using the Tracker you can see exactly how data has been managed from leaving the source system to any transformation to what has been inserted into the new system.
When testing the new system this access means you can easily compare and track any data item you might have concerns about a part of the test.
The Tracker is a web application that is easily accessible to everyone involved in the project. It shows the migration results and any events raised, including baseline comparisons that reveal trends since the last iteration.
What can we do better?
Better management and execution is the answer. Management needs to communicate objectives, scope, and priorities for the project in return for relevant management information to manage tradeoffs and critical issues.
The project team needs a common methodology, the right skills, knowledge, and shared tools to support them.
One agenda and everyone on the same page – working together as a team.
Why is data migration difficult?
Most organisations are not used to doing data migrations – and not good at it!
It’s often viewed as a one-off, so people often ‘fall forward’ and just do what they know and hope for the best.
Data migration will highlight data quality issues, business process uncertainties, lack of knowledge and see stakeholders’ different priorities – creating a difficult environment for the project to succeed.
Why data migrations fail!
Most data migrations fail to some extent, on either time, cost, or quality – the worst case on all three.
Data migrations are often an afterthought in large change projects, be it a merger, organisational change, system upgrade. Focus is somewhere else and lots of things are changing. Data migration at times becomes a moving target.
Many organisations don’t understand the complexity of the task at hand and underestimate the importance of having the right of people, processes, and tools in place.
