The Migration Plan describes the migration from existing systems or applications to the new solution. This plan is needed whenever you have to salvage anything (data, artifacts, physical objects, etc) from the old environment to the new one. In some projects this can be very challenging and the source of a lot of effort so plan early and carefully.

It is important to have an understanding from your sponsor of the Business Objectives driving the migration. Keep in mind each objective will have associated costs and risks. Examples of these are:

• Minimize Business Disruption
• Stay in full compliance with laws and regulations
• Keep migration costs as low as possible
• Choose acceptable alternatives that avoid risk to the target implementation date

Here is a list of some things to consider (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

• Migration Strategies (alternatives, including tools and implications for each)
• Migration process (how, when and by whom the migration will be performed)
• Test Environment (Setup, timing, hardware, people)
• Preparation (Everything needed to be ready to execute the Migration Plan)
• Decommissioning of replaced resources (timing, disposal)
• Back-out plan (what to do if something goes wrong with the migration)