3 Considerations for the Assessment Phase

[AUDIO LOGO] Top three guidelines for pre-migration assessment. Process, people, and technology. Figure out what the processes are, who the people you need are, and what the technology you need is, what tools are you going to use, what processes, and what people. And then bring those together. But that's where you need to start. And I'd say if you're talking about a data migration or a database migration, the best place to start is the data. Model before you move. Start with a data modeler in a tool like erwin or one of the other data tools out there where you're going to go look at your data, see what your data looks like. And then once you start doing that, start pulling the threads-- who owns the data, where is the data where is the source of truth for this particular data element, where is this particular data element used, how does it go, how do I validate that particular data element. You figure all those things out and you figure all that out in advance that's going to lead you into the project plan. Does the data need to be available 24/7, or is it an accounting system-- I'm picking on accountants these days-- where data only needs to be available 8:00 to 5:00. So the data model is a big, big thing for you. Would that give you a sense of how neat versus how chaotic this has the potential to be? Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] I'm looking at how clean is your data model, how normalized is your data, and if it's not, why is it not, and how chaotic is the data, and what's the data look like. And you at the quality, too. I mean, when I think of modeling, I think of more than just a simple physical model, but also all the way up to the logical model and conceptual model and maybe even the semantic model. The more modeling you can do, the better.