Hi Karma,

In terms of identifying requirements and solution, a data migration project is not any different than any other project a Business Analyst would work on.

I would begin by asking some of the basic questions (and documenting the answers in the FRD 'system shall' statements, diagrams, tables, etc.):

• Why - Why is this project important?  What is the rationale behind this project?   What benefits are going to be realized by this project?
• Who - Who will be benefiting from this activity?  Who are the key actors (direct or indirect)?  Who will be generating the spreadsheets to be uploaded?
• When - How often do these spreadsheets need to be uploaded?  Is the uploaded triggered by a system event, timer, user, business event?
• How - Are there any business or user requirements which place constraints on how the solution should be crafted?
• What - What type of information is contained in the spreadsheets?  Are there more than one type of data to be uploaded (ex: credit card debit transactions, invoices, journal entries, wire transfer transactions, etc.)

Specific to your situation, here are some things you'll need to consider in your requirements and/or solution:

• Are there going to be one type of spreadsheet ore more than one?
• How will the import process know what data is what? Ex: will columns have labels, will first column always contain transaction ID...
• Are there any assumptions as to the quality of the data? Ex: are all fields required, does the system assume that column x contains dates formatted as mmddyyy? etc.

In terms of the format of information in the FRD, it depends on what you want to show:

• For assumptions, a table listing the assumption and if it was confirmed by whom.
• For types of upload records/data, a class diagram (business object model) would be great.
• For actors and what they want to accomplish, maybe a use case diagram with use cases such as: Upload Off-line Invoices, Upload Adjustments, etc.
• For non-functional requirements, you could use 'system shall' statements such as: "The system shall support up to 20 spreadsheet uploads per day."  "The system shall support spreadsheets of up to 10,000 records." etc.

Hope this helps!

Adrian