The Transparent Migration Checklist

Use this checklist to pressure-test your migration plan before you commit. We've used some version of it on every engagement since 2021.

How to use it

For each section, score yourself 1–5 on every question. Total your section scores; anything under 60% needs attention before kickoff.

Section 1 — Business Drivers

1. Can you articulate the migration's primary driver in one sentence?
2. Is there an executive sponsor with budget authority?
3. Is there a deadline driven by an external constraint (contract, EOL, regulation)?
4. Has the business case been signed off in writing?
5. Have you defined the success metric that triggers project closure?

Section 2 — Data Foundation

1. Do you have a current data dictionary?
2. Is column-level lineage available for your top 20 reports?
3. Do you know your total data volume within ±10%?
4. What percentage of your data is semi-structured?
5. How much PII flows through the warehouse?

Section 3 — Tooling & Architecture

1. Is your ETL/ELT in version control?
2. Do schema changes go through code review?
3. Are your BI tools cloud-native?
4. Do you have a CI/CD pipeline for SQL?
5. How many vendor-specific functions are in your current SQL?

Section 4 — Team Capacity

1. How many engineers can you dedicate at >50%?
2. How many have production experience on the target platform?
3. Has the team been through a major migration before?
4. Who owns post-migration operations?
5. Is training budget allocated separately?

Section 5 — Risk & Constraints

1. What's your tolerance for cutover-related downtime?
2. Are there regulatory requirements that constrain cloud region choice?
3. Do you have a rollback plan?
4. What contractual obligations does the legacy contract create?
5. Who needs to approve the architecture decisions?

(Continue with questions 26–32 in the full PDF.)

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