Reviewing data conversion requirements

Another important set of overlooked requirements is data conversion requirements. I have seen many projects that do an excellent job of enabling new functionality with a great-looking user interface, automations, workflows, reports, and so on, but they missed one very important requirement related to legacy data. Users can only use great features and functions if they can easily access their existing legacy data in the new system in a usable format. These data requirements fall under functional and non-functional requirements.

Some key tasks that you need to think through while capturing data requirements are as follows:

• The scope of the legacy data to be converted; for example, data sources, volumes, and history data.
• Map the data from legacy values to new values.
• Scrub the legacy data so that it can be extracted before it’s converted; for example, for dedupe, completeness, and accuracy purposes.
• Dependencies between...