A checklist for safe data migration

Data migrations fail quietly. The system goes live, everyone moves on, and weeks later someone discovers records were dropped, dates shifted, or duplicates multiplied. The damage is trust: once people stop believing the data, the whole system is undermined.

A checklist for trustworthy migration

• Profile first: understand quality, structure, and relationships before moving anything.
• Design the target schema deliberately — do not carry old mistakes forward.
• Clean and de-duplicate as part of the migration, not after.
• Migrate in controlled runs with validation at each step.
• Reconcile record counts and key values against the source.
• Keep the old system available until the new one is verified.

Verification is the point

The migration itself is the easy part. The value is in the verification: proving, with reconciliation reports, that nothing was lost or altered. Only then do you cut over with confidence.

A migration you cannot verify is a migration you cannot trust.