The methodology that gets migrations delivered.
Practical Data Migration is the business-first method for enterprise data migration: proven over three decades, published by the British Computer Society, practised by certified professionals worldwide.
Most migrations don't fail on the technology
They run late, blow the budget, or fall over after go-live. Not because the tooling is hard, but because the business won't engage, the legacy data is a mystery, and there's no method holding it together. You end up carrying a risk nobody else in the programme understands, and the blame when it slips.
PDM exists to change that: a proven, business-first method, and a community of practitioners who have been exactly where you are.
PDM Academy
The PDM course, hosted right here: video lessons narrated in Johny's own voice, the DHGS case study, quizzes, and your completion certificate. Finish and you keep a downloadable practitioner field guide - the methodology and templates distilled for real projects. Free to start, with new modules added as the course grows.
Wherever you are with data migration
Running a migration programme
Get the method that keeps it on track, with the business engaged and the risk under control.
Start the course →Advising clients
Speak the language clients trust, backed by BCS and three decades of practice.
Explore the methodology →New to data migration
Learn it properly from the people who wrote the book, free, at your own pace.
Watch a lesson free →Four principles hold it together
Business first
Migration decisions are driven by business outcomes, not technical convenience. The business owns the data, and the migration.
Engage the experts
The people who know the data best are involved from day one. Subject matter experts are essential, not optional.
Fit-for-purpose quality
Quality is defined by what the target system needs, not abstract perfection. A migration is not a cleansing project.
Measure everything
Progress, quality and completeness are quantified, never assumed. What you cannot measure, you cannot manage.
Wall to wall, floor to ceiling
PDM covers the complete floor space of a migration: two workstreams, nine modules, from the first strategy decision to the day the legacy system is decommissioned. Use all of it, or use it as the checklist that proves you have no gaps and no overlaps.
Explore the methodology
"You'll spend more time on a data migration working with your business partners and colleagues than you will with the actual technology."
Johny Morris
A community of data migration practitioners
Data migration is a lonely role. PDM gives you peers who get it: certified practitioners, field articles, the tools the method is practised with, and a place to share what you've learned and learn from others.
Prefer to read first? Practical Data Migration, the third edition, has the complete method chapter by chapter.
What practitioners say
Notes from real migrations
Why data migration should stop being a lonely discipline
Many migration failures are not technical accidents but social and structural ones. Shared method and a practitioner community surface risk earlier and cut avoidable cost.
6 July 2026 configuration-managementData management in large projects
Getting data management right on large projects means establishing a single point of truth for your data structures - and asking not 'is this the correct version?' but 'is this the appropriate version?'
6 March 2026 data-ownershipBuilding data ownership
Data ownership is a metaphor, not a legal statement. Getting it right on a migration project means engaging business stakeholders as partners from day one - at both operational and senior levels.
20 February 2026Join at the start, and help shape it
The course is free. The methodology stays free. Sign in with one click, no password, and take your place among the founding members.