When migrating data or moving a workspace from one tool to another, whether it’s moving from a traditional tool to a custom tool, from a custom tool to a traditional tool, or from one traditional tool to another, you might have issues with duplicate data, empty records, records that were accidentally created, and incomplete records. All of these are things that you will encounter, especially if you’ve been using these tools for three to six years or more. You might see things like a project that was in progress with tasks from three, four, or five years ago still left open. The people who were in charge of those projects are no longer with you, or they cannot remember what happened because you weren’t documenting a lot at the time. So you have to close all of that. With incomplete records, you don’t even know where to fill in these things, especially if you’re working across three, four, five, or six different tools.
In this situation, you’re starting afresh. Whenever you’re moving, migrating, or even rebuilding in a different workspace, you have to try to create a better environment. You’re not replicating everything because this is already a very messy situation. If there’s a problem with follow-through, closing projects, accountability, or accuracy, you have to find a solution, if not, you’ll keep on having these issues.
If you have a lot of duplicate records, duplicate projects, incomplete records, or tasks that were accidentally created, you might see things like a single letter or a single word. It was created by mistake, and depending on the kind of environment or tool, it could inherit the characteristics of a project, making it appear as an active activity or task when, in reality, it’s nothing. So it leaves the project looking as though it’s still open, and you don’t know how to treat those records.
Again, when you’re moving, you’re not going to try to replicate this. You’ve already seen that this is the issue, so you want to create an environment that reminds people and makes it easier for them to come in and update that information. You’re trying to reduce the number of clicks and the amount of manual input that your team members have to carry out. When they have to re-enter a lot of redundant information that should already be there, most of the time they don’t want to do it, and even if they do, they make a lot of mistakes.
So you want a situation where the information or details that can be pre-filled are pre-filled. Let’s say you’re working on a project daily and you have certain recurring activities on that project every day. You want your team members to come in and fill in only a couple of details about the work they’ve done. You don’t want them to have to create the same tasks every time. You don’t want them to have to enter dates whenever the current date can be filled automatically. You don’t want them to have to select themselves as the user whenever that can also be pre-filled. You have to look for tools that allow you to carry over these unique IDs and don’t require your team members to input them over and over again. These tools should know when a user has logged in, know who is carrying out certain activities, and update those details automatically. There’s going to be fewer mistakes, you’re going to know who is accountable for what, who updated what, and who created what. You won’t be relying on manual input from people, which is always prone to mistakes and errors.