Profile before you promise
Duplicate item masters, inconsistent units of measure and customers with three spellings are discovered by profiling, not by discussion. A two-week profiling exercise typically changes the plan more than any workshop.
Ownership sits with the business
Engineering can list every record that fails a rule. Only the business can decide which of the three duplicate customers is real. Name owners per data domain and track cleansing progress weekly on the programme dashboard.
Reconcile and rehearse
Every load ends with a reconciliation against control totals — stock value, open receivables, open orders — signed by finance. Cutover is rehearsed end to end, timed, and includes a tested rollback before the real weekend.
- Dry run one: full load, timed, defects logged
- Dry run two: after fixes, with the business performing day-one tasks
- Go-live: same script, no improvisation