Checklist
Microsoft 365 migration planning checklist
A printable checklist for Microsoft 365 tenant migration discovery, planning, governance, cutover, and validation.
How to use this:assign an owner and status to every item. “Unknown” is a valid discovery result; it is not a valid cutover plan.
1. Business context
- Business event and target outcome are documented.
- Source and destination organizations are confirmed.
- Executive sponsor and decision owner are named.
- Target dates, blackout periods, and hard dependencies are recorded.
- Success and acceptance criteria are agreed.
2. Tenant and identity
- Source and destination tenants are identified.
- Domains, identity authority, and coexistence needs are understood.
- User, guest, service, shared, and privileged accounts are inventoried.
- Licensing assumptions are reviewed.
- Authentication and access changes are planned.
3. Workloads and data
- Exchange mailboxes and dependencies are inventoried.
- Teams, channels, memberships, and owners are mapped.
- OneDrive users, volumes, and exceptions are assessed.
- SharePoint sites, owners, structure, and customizations are reviewed.
- Retention, legal, regulatory, and data-residency needs are documented.
4. Delivery plan
- Migration waves and readiness gates are defined.
- Pilot users and validation scenarios are selected.
- Communications and service-desk readiness are planned.
- Escalation, rollback, and exception decisions are explicit.
- Cutover ownership and contact paths are confirmed.
5. Validation and handover
- Technical and business validation steps are written.
- Failure and exception handling is assigned.
- Completion evidence is retained.
- Old access, permissions, tools, and data are handled as agreed.
- Support ownership and post-migration monitoring are active.
