When migrating data to a new system, be wary of these common mistakes that can derail your project.
Data migration can bring many benefits to the companies that move forward, including improved business agility, increased employee productivity and significant cost savings. However, businesses need to consider the most common data migration challenges and how to mitigate them before embarking on major migration projects.
This guide covers several data migration errors that often throw projects off track. Knowing about them is the first step to avoiding them.
TO SEE: Checklist: PC and Mac Migrations (Tech Republic Premium)
Jump to:
Common Data Migration Errors
Trying to migrate data without a subscription
Some companies get so excited about migrating their data that they try to proceed without a migration plan in place. Maybe they underestimate the future challenges of data center migration, or maybe they think they will find solutions when problems arise. Both mindsets are recipes for disaster during a complex process like data migration.
It takes extra time to develop a thoughtful plan, but having a strong foundation before starting data migration is one of the smartest ways to avoid pitfalls.
TO SEE: How to deal with a multicloud migration: step-by-step guide (TechRepublic)
While developing your data migration plan, consider seeking advice from a vendor or other third-party company with extensive experience. Many of these companies offer consulting and management services to help customers navigate cloud and other migrations smoothly. These specialists should be able to answer all of your questions and address factors that you might not otherwise consider in your own migration plan.
Schedule a migration at the wrong time
Even if a data migration goes better than expected, it will likely lead to business disruptions and downtime. Some people overlook that fact and panic when they realize it’s taking longer than expected and impacting customer experiences.
Determining the best time to perform a migration means paying attention to relevant business activity patterns. Do most customer interactions happen at certain times or on certain days? Is your company having a particularly busy season?
A good tip for planning migrations is to plan large moves over the weekend, when inbound data volumes may be lower. This planning decision usually reduces the chance of data migration errors.
TO SEE: Data migration vs data integration: what’s the difference? (TechRepublic)
Regardless of your industry and its idiosyncrasies, pay attention to the seasons, months, hours or days when your business is busiest. Avoid those times and stick to the slowest periods of activity instead. In many cases, you can also schedule and automate migration tasks outside office hours.
Not freeing up time and resources for testing
It can be tempting to postpone testing or not do it at all during data migration, especially since testing can be tedious. However, if you skip the testing phase, there is a higher chance that the project will fail or be delayed by unexpected and unfavorable results.
Another flaw related to testing is that you leave all testing to developers. Developers can and should certainly be involved in the testing process as technology professionals, but people from all other parts of the company should join them by actively participating in the testing. Employees from other departments are more likely to discover application- and use-case-specific errors as they occur.
Ultimately, testing must take place at every stage of the data migration. It is also best for company representatives to perform a combination of formal test cycles and shorter unit tests to identify data migration errors early.
How to reduce the risks of data migration
It is unrealistic to expect your project to be free from data migration errors, but mitigating these potential errors is within your control. A good starting point is to choose specific individuals who are responsible for overseeing the migration. Depending on the magnitude of your efforts, it may even be necessary and meaningful to create a team of people who will take that responsibility.
TO SEE: Hiring kit: Data architect (Tech Republic Premium)
Your team also needs to decide what data to move, when and why. Some business leaders make the mistake of moving every piece of information related to their organization. However, that strategy increases the risk of data migration errors and causes testing to take longer than necessary. Most companies have at least some old data sets and operations that don’t need to be migrated.
Another best practice is recognizing when you need outside expertise to make the data migration process run smoothly. Outside specialists can assess your situation, advise how long it should take and look for any issues that could cause problems later on.
And finally, it is best to anticipate that certain migration steps will take longer than appears on paper. Perhaps a particular stage requires more in-depth testing or presents unforeseen obstacles. You may experience some budget or resource constraints unexpectedly. Either way, your team needs to be careful when making time-based estimates for your data migration plan.
What is the percentage of failed data migration?
Looking for statistics on the number of failed data migrations can be a daunting exercise. For example, a survey of large companies found that: two-thirds of companies did not make it their goals for cloud migration.
Other research indicated that 48% of respondents felt that concerned that data migration could be lead to leaks and cyber attacks are increasing worldwide. Another statistic showed that only 39% of respondents had confidence in their abilities to secure data stored in the cloud.
TO SEE: Top data integration tools (TechRepublic)
Executives define migration failures in different ways, and while it can be nerve-wracking, it’s critical to consider what a migration failure looks like for your business before the migration begins. Thinking about your project in the context of what could go wrong makes it easier to spot problems early and enlist extra help at critical tipping points in the process.
