How To Plan For A Successful Salesforce Data Migration

This blog on data migration planning features a brief into towards data migration planning process then it focuses on common data migration issues, the extension of UAT period and relationship with project manager

Data Migration Planning Process

Your migration plan should resemble a customary project plan, with courses of events, their timelines, dependencies, constraints, and milestones. It's conceivable your project manager will require your assistance in developing this plan, except if they have the technical expertise.

Salesforce data migration projects generally have repeatable processes. It's an incredible chance to construct processes and checklists to make sure that each step is completed.

• Find Stakeholders:- Involving end users in planning guarantees their buy-in and support for the project. Stakeholders understand the data best and can emerge out of various teams or departments in an organization

• Identify data:- Stakeholders can easily comprehend what data should be migrated and can answer queries on how it's structured, where it's stored, whether the data is clean, data duplication possibilities, and how it will influence Salesforce data. It might require making new or adding current data fields, validations, and field values in Salesforce.

• Head Start:- The data migration project is generally a part of a larger project. A promising start would be prior to the start of the larger project. For gaining the head start you can identify, prepare, clean, restructure, and map the data

• Prepare data:- Since you've figured out what changes should be done in Step 2, it's an ideal opportunity to put the changes in place to ensure error-free data migration. You can add or modify objects, fields, workflows, and validations.

• Build enough time into the schedule:- Data will, in general, have plenty of exemptions, and you need to be prepared to address them. Questions emerge and issues surface when you work with both people and data. In-case, the schedule isn't realistic or logical, people may skip the activities to meet due dates.

• Select the correct tool:- Salesforce and AppExchange have numerous tools for data migration projects. In some cases, an organization may require changes that need to be incorporated into an existing tool or they can develop a new one as per their requirement.

• Test migration:- No one wants to back out after importing a pile of data into the system. Instead of taking a chance with the data in production, run the test in a sandbox and fix the issues that arise.

• Assign the correct individuals:- Avoid allocating a large number of people on a single task or inviting an excessive number of people for a meeting. When you identify who ought to be included, you must outline each person’s role and involve them accordingly.

• Migrate data:-The test migration should set you up for the migration into production. Before migrating, inform the Salesforce users about it and what shall be the repercussions. Subsequent to migrating data into Salesforce, validate the data. Despite the fact that you did this in Step 4, you should cross check in the live system.

Common Data Migration Issues

Prevention is better than cure and it applies to data migration as well. You never know when you will run into data migration issues. It is advisable to be prepared and cross check with your checklist so that the possibilities of data migration issues can be minimized. Though there are common data migration issues such as

• Poor quality data
• Missing tools and resources
• Neglecting to map the data to new structure and configuration
• Skipping testing
• Failing to get ready for the effect of current data, procedures, and validation on migrated data
• Evading data governance policies
• Noticing unexpected data issues and exceptions
• Overlooking access and authorizations

Plan for an all-encompassing UAT Period

Whenever you ask users to perform UAT, you must ask them to test for ‘Intent’ or business goals. Generally, the codes and data migration meet all the technical specification, but it completely misses the business goal requirements.

Lamentably, intent defects are a laborious process. Once logged, they are probably going to require a meeting to affirm the issue is genuine, and what should be done about it. So, you must plan for users to have sufficient time to collectively test the data. Also, UAT testers are regularly performing UAT in addition to their normal everyday duty, you can't expect them to go through 4 hours daily testing, each day for about two weeks. Ensure that you comprehend their schedule and they understand the commitment expected to legitimately perform UAT.

Your Project Manager is your companion and partner, work with them.

When working with your project manager, make sure that they comprehend your dependencies and you comprehend the Salesforce build plan. After that, work with your PM to amass a detailed schedule that incorporates all the activities and their dependencies.

This implies that whenever you start coding the data migration process

• The Salesforce build is finished for that object
• It has been sent to your target environment
• You have received the data from the client or user
• You have enough time to analyze it and code all the transformations.

Your project manager is your companion and partner, if your customer or the Salesforce development team isn't giving you what you need to carry out your responsibility, your project manager can step in. However, the project manager can only take this step when you have a detailed schedule that lays down the activities, its dependencies, and responsibilities of different people.

Conclusion

If you want that your data migration project turns out to be a huge success, you must invest your time and resources on its planning. You need to identify all the activities that will be required to complete the project along with their inter-dependencies and you must put them in a proper timeline. Other than that, you need to identify the risk associated with data migration in Salesforce and what all measures you can take to mitigate it. Communication also plays a vital role in planning, so you must involve the right people at the right time to understand their requirement and work collectively towards a unified goal.