AWS Migration Readiness Assessment

Find the planning gaps and critical safeguards that should be addressed before production migration work begins.

10 evidence-based questionsAbout 3 minutesNo credentials or email
Assessment progress0 of 10
1. Do you have a current inventory of servers, databases, integrations, dependencies, and owners?Discovery · Critical safeguard
2. Do you understand current infrastructure usage and monthly cost well enough to establish a baseline?Discovery
3. Do you have a recent backup with evidence that a restore has completed successfully?Data · Critical safeguard
4. Have you selected a data migration method and defined acceptable data loss or synchronization lag?Data
5. Can environment-specific configuration, secrets, storage paths, and endpoints be changed without rewriting the application?Application
6. Do you have a repeatable way to test application functionality, performance, and integrations in the new environment?Application
7. Is there an agreed cutover approach, including acceptable downtime or a documented zero-downtime requirement?Cutover
8. Is there a time-bound rollback plan with clear decision authority and a tested path back?Cutover · Critical safeguard
9. Are DNS ownership, TTL changes, certificate validation, and post-cutover checks assigned?Cutover
10. Will monitoring, alerting, logging, access control, backup, and incident ownership be ready before production cutover?Operations · Critical safeguard

What This Assessment Covers

Readiness depends on evidence across discovery, data, application behavior, cutover control, and ongoing operations—not simply the number of tasks completed.

Critical safeguards

Inventory, tested recovery, rollback, and post-cutover operations can block safe execution.

Weighted evidence

Higher-risk controls influence the result more than administrative planning details.

Actionable output

Every missing or uncertain answer produces a specific planning action.

How the Scoring Works

The assessment has ten questions across five categories. Each question has a weight from 1 to 3 based on how much its absence can harm a migration. The maximum weighted total is 23 points.

  • Yes, verified earns the full weight of the question.
  • Not sure earns 25% of the weight, because an unverified control is limited evidence rather than no evidence.
  • No earns nothing.

Your score is the points earned divided by 23, shown as a percentage. Four questions are marked as critical safeguards: workload inventory, a restore-tested backup, a rollback plan, and operational readiness before cutover. If any of them is not answered “Yes, verified”, the result is labeled Critical Blockers Need Resolution regardless of the numeric score. Without blockers, a score of 80 or higher is Ready for Detailed Planning, 60 to 79 is Partially Ready, and below 60 is Foundation Work Needed.

What Each Category Checks and Why It Matters

Discovery

An inventory of servers, databases, integrations, dependencies and owners, plus a cost baseline. Missed dependencies are a common reason migration waves stall or scope grows mid-project.

Data

A recent backup with a successful restore, and a chosen method for moving data with an agreed acceptable data loss. A backup that has never been restored is unproven.

Application

Whether configuration, secrets and endpoints can change without a rewrite, and whether you can repeat functional, performance and integration tests in the new environment.

Cutover

An agreed cutover approach and downtime tolerance, a time-bound rollback plan with a named decision maker, and ownership of DNS, TTL and certificate steps.

Operations

Monitoring, alerting, logging, access control, backup and incident ownership in place before production traffic moves, so the new environment is recoverable from day one.

Example Result

This is an illustrative example of how the scoring works, not data from a real assessment. Suppose a team answers as follows: inventory, backup, configuration, cutover approach and DNS are verified; the data plan, validation and operations are “Not sure”; the cost baseline and rollback plan are “No”.

  • Points earned: 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.75 = 13.75 of 23, or a score of 60.
  • By score alone this would read as Partially Ready. But rollback is “No” and operations is “Not sure”, so two critical safeguards lack evidence and the result is Critical Blockers Need Resolution.
  • Category view: Discovery 75%, Data 70%, Application 63%, Cutover 57%, Operations 25%.
  • First actions: define rollback triggers, ownership and steps, then build the monitoring, access and incident baseline before cutover.

How to Interpret Your Result

  • Critical Blockers Need Resolution: fix the flagged safeguards before scheduling any production move. A high score does not compensate for a missing rollback or an untested backup.
  • Foundation Work Needed: too much is unverified to plan dates. Start with inventory, backups and ownership.
  • Partially Ready: the fundamentals are forming. Close the listed gaps during planning.
  • Ready for Detailed Planning: the core safeguards are present. You still need a workload assessment, a target design and a wave plan before committing to dates.

Recommended Next Steps

Work through the prioritized actions in your result, starting with critical safeguards. The AWS cloud migration checklist explains each preparation step in more detail. When the gaps are closed, or if you would rather have them validated by someone else, the AWS cloud migration service covers environment discovery, migration waves, cutover and rollback planning. New to readiness reviews? What an AWS Migration Readiness Assessment is and how to run one explains the wider AWS framework this check is a lighter version of. The assessment is a planning aid and does not replace a review of your actual environment.