A US Regional Bank Migrates and Syncs Records from Microfocus ALM 12.53 to Azure DevOps using Kovair QuickSync

Challenges

Data Migration from one tool to the other always brings along certain challenges as mentioned below:

• The volume of data to be migrated from Microfocus ALM was in thousands and migrating these without automation was a mammoth task for the Bank.
• Specific interrelationships were to be migrated – Specific relationship link migration out of all the existing relation links was a challenging task.
• Being cross-vendor tools, one from Microfocus ALM and the other from Microsoft, there exists no out-of-the-box connectivity between them.
• Microfocus ALM 12.53 and Azure DevOps have contrasting differences in the data models for various artifacts.
• Records from multiple Microfocus projects were to be migrated into Azure DevOps projects. Merging items from multiple Microfocus ALM projects to fewer structured Azure DevOps project was another big challenge for this project.
• The Bank was using several AD users not having access to the Azure DevOps Organizations. Mapping and migrating those users were a challenging job.
• All Attachments and Comments associated with all Microfocus ALM artifacts including Design Steps and Call Tests must be migrated to Azure DevOps.

Last but not the least, the Bank also wanted to Synchronize the records that were entered in Microfocus ALM during migration after the entire migration was over. All these challenges added up to the complexity of the data migration and made it extremely challenging to be done manually.

Kovair Solution

Kovair, in the first step of the migration, started understanding the data structure and reaching a consensus on the migration use cases with the client. Kovair used its data migration and synchronization solution – Kovair QuickSync for migrating the data. QuickSync tool was installed in a server at the client’s organization. Before initiating the configuration of QuickSync, Kovair analysed the existing data structure of Microfocus ALM Projects and took a confirmation from the client on the field and artefact mapping. After this, the configuration consisting of mapping the Projects, Artifacts, and Fields between Microfocus ALM and Azure DevOps was done on a project by project basis. The entire configuration was achieved through simple mouse clicks without the need for any coding. As there were altogether 20 projects to be migrated, the client preferred to go in the route of sequential migration. Every project went through the sequential phases of configuration of field and artefact mapping, data migration and data validation post migration. Initially, the customer performed POC with a small project in their staging environment and once they were satisfied with the POC results, migration of production data took place. The migration took care of the most complex challenge – the contrasting data structure in the following ways:

• The Microfocus ALM Defects were migrated as Bugs in Azure DevOps.
• Microfocus ALM Tests were migrated as Test Cases in Azure DevOps by maintaining the same Test Plan hierarchy.
• Apart from the artifacts, the corresponding attachments, comments, user values, parent-child relations and the relationship links across all the artifacts were migrated.
• Kovair was able to overcome the challenge of migrating the data in a way that was not supported as per the ADO workflow.
• Upon completion of the migration, Kovair also synchronized all the records that got inserted on Microfocus ALM during the time of migration to ADO.

Kovair QuickSync also facilitated users to have real-time monitoring of the migration. The volume of successful and failed transactions could be monitored from one single window. In case of failed migration, detail level logs were maintained which provided root cause for each of the individual failures. This detailed level of information helped to identify the root cause behind most of the failures. These records were then re-migrated after the problems were fixed. The entire migration happened for 60000 records with a <.01% error.

Kovair QuickSync Business Values

• Easy tool installation and quick initial setup.
• Codeless configuration for mapping the Microfocus ALM Projects, Entities and Fields to the Azure DevOps counterparts.
• Successfully migrated 20 projects including Requirements, Tests and Defects to Azure DevOps.
• Easy monitoring capabilities having an objective and subjective statistical view of the state of migration with reports and logs.
• Retry mechanism for any unsuccessful migration.
• Turnkey solution based upon the transaction volume of data across all configurations and projects for any number of users.
• 100% migration with <0.1% failure.

Conclusion

Kovair QuickSync allowed the Bank to overcome all challenges of data migration and move from Microfocus ALM 12.53 to Azure DevOps within 4 weeks in an incremental manner. The complete data got successfully moved from Microfocus to Azure DevOps by maintaining the hierarchy, relationships and attachments of the record across all the artifacts.