Reconciliation is something that you can easily postpone until later. DON’T!
Reconciliation is what businesses use to determine if the data has been migrated correctly. It is all too easy to delay, especially when you have data that is not loading 100% of the records each and every time. Here are a few tips and tricks for data migration reconciliation.
Start Simple
Start with a count of the no of items that you are migrating. For example, a count of the number of clients in the source system versus the number of clients in the target system, and reconcile these as soon as possible, these should be relatively simple. Even if you are not loading 100% of the data, the number of clients in the source should match the number of clients in the target, plus the number of clients that have failed to load. Try as hard as possible to match these as early as possible.
Keep people in the loop
Make sure all your stakeholders have visibility of the data migration reconciliation as early as possible, your business representative will be able to assist and decide what is required and what isn’t, while the testing person will assist with ensuring that there is enough test coverage to check the complicated scenarios that cannot be counted.
Keep counting
For each load of the source data into the target system that you do in testing, from unit testing all the way through to user acceptance testing, make sure you at least try to do a full data migration reconciliation once in every run. Make sure that in your reconciliation, you make note of the reconciliations that don’t match because of failures, and where possible, capture the differences. For example, do a hash total of the start date of all the records that failed and see that it matches the differences between what is in the source and target.
Data Migration Methodology
Our Data Migration Methodology has been built up over our years of experience and we have incorporated extensive testing, reconciliation, review and validation into our data migration methodology.
How JMR Consulting Ltd can help with Your Data Migration Project?
JMR Consulting UK Ltd.’s core expertise is based upon its Financial Services heritage and 15 years of operating in the Finance and IT sectors. Over this period, JMR’s staff have developed key application migration and data migration solutions and a constant focus on our service philosophy which is at the core of JMR’s business operation.
This post was written by Jo-Anne Owen, a member of the Professional Services team at JMR Consulting UK Ltd. If you would like more information about data migration or our professional services, please call us on 0845 052 0900 or email info@jmruk.com. If you would like to become part of our professional services team, please email jobs@jmruk.com.
Tags: data migration, data migration lessons learned, data migration methodology, data migration planning, data migration project, data migration reconciliation, data migration solutions