P2P

13 I L T A N E T . O R G M igrating data between evidence software platforms is a task that you will need to do at some point in your litigation support career. The key to a successful migration is the planning. When developing the plan spend time thinking about what you will need to do over the course of the entire project. Also think about deadlines, resources, budget, template development, testing, and archiving. This article provides a high level look at what a typical migration plan will contain where you have chosen a software tool. The Plan If you know you will be moving to a new software platform and are in the process of choosing a new one, start planning for the migration now. Choosing a new platform and working towards the migration of data from one platform to another should be done at the same time. Your users will need access to their data immediately upon roll out of the new software. An important step in planning is to determine what steps are involved in moving to the new platform. Writing down the steps using a work breakdown table (Gantt chart) is extremely helpful as it will demonstrate: • gaps and/or areas requiring further investigation and/or instructions, • work dependencies as certain tasks must be completed before others can be undertaken, • which tasks can be run at the same time, • how many people are needed and their skill sets, and • the length of time required for the project. Deadlines Are you working toward a deadline? Is it a hard deadline or soft deadline? What are the consequences of missing that deadline? Have you consulted with your users to determine how they will be affected by the deadline? Be sure changes in deadline are communicated to stakeholders and users so everyone is aware of what is happening. No one likes surprises. Missed deadlines also do not bode well with management. Insource/Outsource Will your team be able to do all the work? If so, is this something that will need to be done after hours or can they do it during hours? If your team is doing the work are there ethical considerations related to the data they will be working with? That is, ethical walls and/or confidentiality considerations where only certain people can do the work? If so, you will need to divide the work accordingly. What if your team does not have capacity to undertake the work, can you involve a vendor? A vendor could assist in making the process go faster by providing additional bodies and/or by developing a tool to streamline the process. Does your firm have restrictions on the use of vendors? Can you only use a vendor in your region/ country due to client data privacy concerns? It is always a good idea to use a Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure agreement with any vendors you are working with. Additional concerns related to working with a vendor are how much access they have to your network and what restrictions and/or monitoring systems can you put int place with respect to same. There may also be ethical and/ or confidentiality concerns. Budgets To determine the budget, you need an understanding of how much work is involved, the resources required,

• Cover