Webinar Q&A

Q. We’re a small organisation and we don’t have anyone whose role is specifically around data. What skills or type of role does it take to lead on a project like this.. does it need a specialist?

Kevin Chadney: Assuming small also means relatively low data volumes and low complexity this is potentially something you can undertake yourselves. You need to be able to extract the data from your existing system(s), transform it to the target system and load the data. Typically, we use SQL and an ETL tool to do this but you could do the transformation in XL and use your target systems import capability to load the data. It all depends on how complex your data is.

Otherwise, you might be better to engage a contractor, migration specialist company or partner who has some experience in the systems you’re working with. Costs will likely be relative to your complexity and volumes.

Q. What was it like tracking all the requirements that were documented at the requirement gathering stage. During UAT, what were the main issues you encountered regarding loading data and did you make use of synthetic data?

Kevin Chadney: Typically we maintain a history of changes in a data mapping document and discussion and key decisions on Trello.

Q. Once we’ve done this project and we’re using a new system with cleansed data, how do we maintain the work as BAU?

Kevin Chadney: Whatever rules you have applied to cleaning your data can be apply as validation rules in the production system to maintain quality.

Q. As part of the governance and decision making did you have something equivalent to a Centre of Excellence?

Steve Bland: Not explicitly, no. That has come about post go-live, working with Giveclarity to develop that.

In terms of governance and decision making, we had an internal full time project manager who managed the different work streams including migration and integration. We managed it as a project with the usual project manager tools, rather than have any explicit centre of excellence and our project manager had come from an internal background so understood all the internal work we did at the organisation.

Q. How does migrating data from several source systems to a single target system impact a data migration project? What can be done to mitigate these challenges?

Kevin Chadney: It complicates it – in terms of resourcing and planning, it is going to be more than the sum of its parts. You should be using a single consolidation migration environment so you will want to have a single environment to extract all your data to deal with it in a single place. Your primary challenge is the integrity between your two sources.

Q. You mentioned archiving the old data.  How long would you recommend you keep the archived data, as there will still be responsibilities under GDPR?

Kevin Chadney: I’m not a legal expert so please don’t take this as gospel – but I think there are allowances for backups. To take an example – if you create periodic backups and store the data offline and offsite then it’s not reasonable to action right to be forgotten on all offline backups. But please take proper advice on this.

Register for UPcoming events