How to succeed a (2-day) data migration project?

Contact list data migration part 2

You can laugh about the volume of the project, but if you cannot succeed a short project, how do you think you will be successful in a large project?

This post is the second and last writing of the  The true story of contact list data migration, where many contacts from 4 different sources are migrated in a possibly  maximum  data quality to iPhone.

Transient data store for migration Nr.3

You saw in the last post, that I had problem in the “last name“-”first name” sequence in Google Address List, and there is no way to repair it automatically (which in the end effect faster then manual correction). The next attempt is to export all the contacts into a CSV file, which can be imported into Excel (or in my case OpenOffice Calc), where the name sequences can be repaired relative quickly. This is already the third transient data store.

Note: At this point I can check off 2 legacy sources: contacts from the old Nokia phone and from the Thunderbird contact list. The Excel table with old numbers and an Outlook Express Address Book is remaining.

An obvious choice is copy-paste the Excel contacts to the OpenOffice Calc (in CSV format), of course with merging the right columns.

The contacts in Outlook Express are in the WAB (Windows Address Book) – which can be imported into a CSV format – so I have again a direct path to the end list with copy-paste.

The last steps as importing back the Google-kind CSV format to the Google Contact list and final synchronisation with iPhone through the iTunes is without any problem and I can be happy.

The key element of the migration

After three attempts I have found the safest and quickest method (and transient data store), where the data import, data modification and data quality optimization has the fastest way: using the Google Address Book CSV format in the application OpenOffice Calc. Look at the final workflow which became complicated in the first look.

Data Quality Aspects

The original scope in aspect of Data Quality is the maximum data quality, there are no excuses, I don’t want to use any garbage in the new phone. Here is the hypothetical question: what is maximum data quality? All data records in the target are fine, so I can use them? Or: all data records in the source(s) are in usable form in the target? Of course not, there are many useless e-mail addresses in the sources which have been added automatically after writing a mail – even from 5-10 years ago, where I don’t know any more, who is behind the e-mail address.

Here are the important points in the data quality:

- the sequence “last name”-”first name” which was explained very detailed in the last post

- the using of the Hungarian special characters as: ö, ő, ü, ű, í, á, é, ó – fortunately using the UTF8 coding between the export-imports that was no problem.
- The right source fields should be placed into the right target fields (e.g. it has no sense a phone number in the e-mail column)

- The phone number formats should have this pattern: (+<international_code> <national_code> <phone_number> )

Elements from Project Management

If I were enough schizophrenic, then I could have the following concerns for a meeting:

- The rough effort estimation said: 2 days time for this activity.

- The risk was mentioned in the beginning of the first post: the biggest risk is not to reach the project goal within time, because of unknown functionality of the available tools. And this was the main focus during the 2 days: to find the fastest solution to merge the contacts. The risk evolved to a real problem, but it has been handled by focusing the solution.

- Measuring problem: How could I be certain, that all important contacts have been migrated? The usual counting technique (counting of the contact of each source and comparison with the number of the final migrated contacts)  is not efficient because of many useless e-mail addresses (with the pattern info@xyz.com). What do you think, what would be an acceptable method to be sure not to forget any contact?

Summary

I declare this mini-project successful, because the migration has been executed in time and in the target point of view with max. data quality. However there were lions in the path even in this relative simple and short activity which endanger the reaching the main goal.