Migration & Modernization

AWS migration assessment checklist: discovery through cutover

10 min read
July 18, 2026
Islam Ali
Founder & Lead Cloud Architect

A structured checklist for inventory, dependencies, security, data, landing zones, testing, cutover, rollback, and post-migration operations.

Migration risk usually comes from unknown dependencies, unclear ownership, incomplete nonfunctional requirements, and weak cutover planning—not from copying compute resources into AWS.

Inventory applications and dependencies

Map services, data stores, integrations, DNS, certificates, identity, scheduled work, network paths, owners, criticality, and unsupported components.

Prepare the AWS foundation

Define accounts, identity, networking, logging, security controls, backups, observability, budgets, deployment, and access before production workloads arrive.

Choose a migration strategy per workload

Rehost, replatform, refactor, retain, retire, or replace based on business value, risk, time, technical debt, and operating goals.

Test cutover and rollback

Validate data consistency, performance, security, monitoring, recovery, DNS, communications, rollback triggers, ownership, and the post-cutover stabilization period.

Turn Insight into Action

Need help applying this in your cloud environment?

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