I’m currently managing a subcontractor’s work and a client’s expectations for a Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce migration. It’s not going well, and I wanted to share some lessons learned with you.
This was mentioned before, but it’s recommended to do at least 3 rounds of data migration, which includes
- One in a Dev sandbox
- One in a Test sandbox (which includes user acceptance testing)
- One in Production
With smaller clients or projects, sometimes you can merge the Dev and Test into one instance. What you should NEVER do is a migration directly in Production.
The subcontractor only imported partial data in the Dev sandbox. There wasn’t sufficient information for the client to verify the data. Due to a time constraint, we simply pushed on, and proceeded with the migration to Production.
The final migration was completed 24 hours before the contract with Raiser’s Edge expires, and all client data is purged forever.
The client found a number of data issues, and we all are scrambling to resolve them. Not fun for anyone, and the countdown continues!
The takeaway
Data migrations are like home renovations. They always take 50% more time than you expect.
Plan this in advance, and make sure to adhere to the 2 or 3 rounds of migration so you can catch nearly all issues before they arise in Production.