One of the things I see all too often is that the data stream of a project is left to the last moment. This causes all sorts of problems – when people are busy and stressed trying to do system testing they find they have no REAL data to test with. They get a few records of made up data that bears no resemblance to the actual data users will see in the production system – and means nothing to them in the context of their legacy system.
Is it any wonder then that the users have trouble validating that the system works the way that it should, they can’t tell because the data that was used didn’t mean anything to them. It is difficult to tell if it is right or wrong.
The best way to overcome this problem is to plan the data migration and cleansing tasks early, align this with the ERP implementation plan and schedule the first Trial Data Conversion (TDC) to happen just before the first round of system testing. This way the users will have real data to use for testing and can focus on the functionality they are getting from their brand new system rather than complaining about the bad data they saw in the system that didn’t mean anything to them.
