Approach for BI Migration

Hi powerbiexpert22 ,

In a nutshell:

Lift-and-Shift (L&S) is just replicating everything as-is on a new platform, including poor business logic, ineffective visuals etc.

Refactoring is rebuilding (sort of) from scratch on the new platform, correcting poor business logic, improving visual effectiveness etc. but also making use of any new/improved functionality that the new tool/platform can provide.

Re: Report rationalisation - yes, you can (and should) do this as part of L&S. You would not L&S any reports that are currently unused or are marked for deprecation, but these decisions would only be made within the scope of reducing the number of items to migrate in totality, not drifting into part-item rationalisation (e.g. slimming down a model then migrating it afterwards) as this then gets into Refactoring.

Re: Time/effort between the two - this is a grey area. I think it would largely depend on how good (or bad) a state your current tool/platform is in. If the current platform is in a slim, efficient, and generally effective state, then L&S will be the best option as you're unlikely to be migrating problems and technical debt onto the new platform. However, while refactoring may seem like more effort as you're effectively starting from scratch, the reality is that, if your current platform is a bit of a mess, then you'll just be carrying tech debt and opportunity/effectiveness loss over to the new platform if you DON'T refactor.

Pete