Migration is evil. It’s a pain in the butt. It’s difficult to test. It’s time consuming. And it only gets run by each user only once. Is it really worth it?

As soon as phrases such as “mapping the data,” “data transfer,” “data migration,” or “convert the legacy data” appear in the context of a project, a wise systems engineer or project manager should see red flags waving…

[Legacy Data and Software Project Planning]

All that time and effort put forth into migration could be used instead to implement new features instead. Users are always clammering for your application to do this or that, fix this bug, add that feature. Do they really care about migrating their old data?

But looking at the total user experience of an application, is lost data really ever ok? Especially when it can be prevented? On the face of it, I want to say no, but if users really want the ability to install your application on a flash drive, they might not care that the upgrade forgot which views they had open. Maybe it’s all a matter of impact.

But then again, some users will really care either way. So maybe you’re just screwed…