Testing & quality assurance in data migration projects

New business models, constant technological progress, as well as ever-changing legal regulations require that companies replace their business applications from time to time. As a side effect, this demands for migrating the data from the existing source application to a target application. Since the success of the application replacement as a form of IT maintenance is contingent on the underlying data migration project, it is crucial to accomplish the migration in time and on budget. This however, calls for a stringent data migration process model combined with well-defined quality assurance measures. The paper presents, first, a field-tested process model for data migration projects. Secondly, it points out the typical risks we have frequently observed in the course of this type of project. Thirdly, the paper provides practice-based testing and quality assurance techniques to reduce or even eliminate these data migration risks.