The mental model
Preserve the value attached to each record.
A URL that moves without its backlinks, a customer without usable access, or an order without service context has technically migrated but lost business value.
The asset classes
Inventory transaction, relationship, discovery, and content assets.
For every asset, record its source, target representation, transformation rule, owner, validation method, and exception path.
Transaction
Products, variants, inventory, orders, taxes, discounts, and fulfillment context.
Relationship
Customers, consent, account access, loyalty, credit, and service history.
Discovery
URLs, redirects, metadata, schema, feeds, sitemaps, and inbound links.
Content
Editorial pages, media, reusable components, locales, and publishing workflow.
Rehearse
Run the migration many times; cut over once.
Script transformations, compare counts and totals, inspect samples, test redirects and integrations, then repeat until known exceptions have owners.
Cutover
A launch command plan removes avoidable improvisation.
Define freeze, final sync, validation, DNS, monitoring, communication, decision authority, and rollback criteria before production traffic moves.