Migration Dashboards
Real-time and historical visibility into migration progress, risk levels, and cost analysis. The primary reporting tool for project managers and executives during active migration phases.
Overview
The Migration Dashboards are action-oriented reporting tools — they tell you what is happening right now with your migrations. Where the Inventory Health dashboards are diagnostic tools used before and during planning (answering "is our data good enough to plan?"), the Migration Dashboards are execution tools used throughout active migration phases (answering "how are our migrations progressing and what do we need to do next?"). This distinction matters: once execution begins, you should be spending more time in the Migration Dashboards and less time in the Inventory Health dashboards.
There are three main Migration Dashboards, each serving a different audience and a different purpose. The Migration Summary is the PM's daily operating view — it shows all active and planned migration events, move group completion percentages, runbook task counts, and a Gantt-style timeline. The Migration Risks — Top 10 is the primary risk reporting tool for steering committees and governance reviews, surfacing the highest-scoring risks across the programme at a glance. The Cost Analysis dashboard suite (comprising Cost Allocation, Cost Reduction, and Cost Usage) is used by finance, cloud architects, and programme directors to track cloud spend, identify savings opportunities, and attribute costs to the right business units or migration events.
Together these three dashboards provide the complete picture needed for programme governance: progress against plan, risk posture, and financial performance. They are designed to be used in combination — a typical weekly status pack draws figures from all three.
When to Use
- Daily during active migration phases — open Migration Summary each morning to check overnight progress, review task statuses, and identify anything blocked.
- In weekly PM status meetings — Migration Summary provides the live progress figures; Risks Top 10 provides the risk update. Both should be standard agenda items in any project status meeting.
- For steering committee and governance reports — Risks Top 10 is designed specifically for this audience. Migration Summary completion percentages provide the progress headline.
- When investigating a blocked migration — drill down from Migration Summary into specific move groups or runbooks to identify which tasks are blocked and who is assigned to resolve them.
- For cost optimisation reviews — use the Cost Analysis dashboard during monthly cloud spend reviews or as part of ongoing FinOps activities to identify waste and right-sizing opportunities.
Key Dashboards
Step-by-Step Instructions
Preparing a weekly migration status report
Navigate to Analytics → Migration Summary. For each active migration event, note the overall completion percentage and move group completion bars. These figures form the core of your progress update. Compare against last week's figures if you have them recorded — the delta (e.g., "Wave 1 moved from 58% to 73% this week") is more informative than the absolute percentage alone.
Navigate to Analytics → Migration Risks. Review whether any risks have appeared in the Top 10 since your last review, whether any existing risks have increased in score (indicating they have become more likely or more impactful), and whether any previously high risks have been resolved or downgraded. New High-severity risks should be called out explicitly in your status report.
Navigate to Migrations → Command Centre and filter by status = Blocked. Any blocked tasks represent active impediments to progress. Note the task name, the assigned owner, and the reason for the block. These are the items that need escalation or action this week. Include a "Blockers" section in your status report listing each open blocked task and its resolution path.
Use the export buttons on Migration Summary and Risks Top 10 to generate PDF or CSV outputs. Alternatively, take screenshots of the key charts and timeline views. These visuals are more effective in stakeholder packs than text summaries — the Gantt-style timeline in particular communicates progress against plan instantly to a non-technical audience.
Assemble the completion percentages, risk update, blockers list, and dashboard visuals into your weekly status report format. If you use the Automation Reports feature (Administration → Automation Reports), the system can send a scheduled PDF of Migration Summary directly to stakeholders each week — removing the need for manual export and distribution once configured.
Using Migration Summary in a status meeting
Navigate to Analytics → Migration Summary and leave it open as a live reference during the meeting. Unlike a static slide deck, the live dashboard can be drilled into if a question arises about a specific move group or event — eliminating "I'll need to check that and come back to you" responses.
For each event in the current programme, call out the completion percentage and move group status bars. Point out which move groups are running ahead of plan and which are behind. The colour-coded status indicators (green/amber/red) make this section of the meeting fast — the audience can see the status at a glance and discussion can focus on the amber and red items.
Click through from the summary view into any move group showing amber or red status. The detail view shows the individual runbook tasks, which ones are blocked, who owns them, and what the T-Minus due date was. This live drill-down is one of the most valuable features for in-meeting problem solving — decisions can be made in real time rather than deferred to offline follow-up.
Switch to the Risks Top 10 dashboard to close the meeting with the current risk picture. Review the top three to five risks and confirm ownership and mitigation status. Any risks without a named owner or a mitigation plan should be assigned in the meeting. The risk register is a live view — assignments made in the system are visible immediately.
Reviewing cost analysis
Navigate to Analytics → Cost Analysis. The Cost Analysis section contains three sub-modules accessible via tabs or sub-navigation: Cost Allocation, Cost Reduction, and Cost Usage. Start with Cost Usage for a chronological view of actual spend before moving to the allocation and reduction views.
The Cost Usage sub-module shows actual cloud spend over time broken down by service type and region. Review the trend line for the current period — is spend tracking as expected against the migration programme budget? Check the projections section to see whether current run rates will remain within budget over the next 30/60/90 days. Spikes in spend often correspond to large migration cut-overs where source and target environments are both running simultaneously.
Switch to the Cost Reduction sub-module. This view surfaces specific recommendations for eliminating waste in the cloud environment: idle resources (provisioned but unused), right-sizing opportunities (over-specified instances), and reserved instance purchase recommendations. Review each recommendation and note which can be actioned immediately versus those that require a change approval. Prioritise idle resources as these represent pure waste with no trade-offs.
Switch to the Cost Allocation sub-module. This view attributes cloud spend to business units or migration events based on tagging and project assignments. If your organisation uses chargeback or showback, this is the source data for internal billing. Check that recently migrated assets are tagged correctly — untagged resources appear in an "Unallocated" category that should be minimised. Correct tagging is a runbook task that should be included in every migration cut-over checklist.
Setting up automated email reports
Navigate to Administration → Automation Reports. This section allows you to configure scheduled dashboard exports that are automatically emailed to a defined recipient list. Setting these up at the start of a migration programme saves significant time over the course of weeks or months of regular reporting.
Click Add Report in the top-right corner. The report configuration form opens. Select the dashboard you want to schedule — for most PMs, starting with Migration Summary is the most useful. You can create additional reports for other dashboards once the first is configured.
Select the frequency (Daily, Weekly, Monthly), the day of the week if weekly, and the time of delivery. For a Monday morning steering committee pack, set to Weekly on Monday at 07:00 — the report arrives in inboxes before the working day begins. For a daily operations report, set to Daily at 07:00 so the team starts each day with current status.
Enter the email addresses of all recipients. Add anyone who needs to see the report but may not have regular access to the system — external stakeholders, senior leaders, or client representatives. Select the output format: PDF is recommended for reports that will be reviewed on screen or printed; CSV is better for recipients who want to manipulate the data further.
Click Save to activate the automated report. You can trigger a test delivery from the report configuration screen to verify that the email format and content look as expected before the first scheduled delivery. Check with at least one recipient that the email has arrived and the attachment is readable. Automated reports that are never verified can silently fail for days before anyone notices.
Dashboard Details
Migration Summary
Path: Analytics → Migration Summary
The Migration Summary dashboard is the primary day-to-day operating view for any migration PM. The top section shows all active and planned migration events as a list, each with a progress bar representing the percentage of runbook tasks that are complete. Beside each event, a move group breakdown shows individual move group completion bars, making it easy to see at a glance whether progress is evenly distributed across groups or whether specific groups are lagging.
Below the event list, a task status summary shows the count of all runbook tasks across the programme broken down by status: Complete, In Progress, Not Started, Blocked, and Deferred. The Blocked count is the most critical figure to monitor during active execution — any non-zero blocked count should be investigated immediately. The Gantt-style timeline view shows each event's planned start, go-live date, and end date on a horizontal timeline, with actual progress overlaid, making it easy to identify whether events are tracking on schedule.
The PM should open this dashboard every morning during active migration phases. It is the single source of truth for programme progress and should supersede any parallel spreadsheet-based tracking. Key metrics to watch: overall programme completion percentage, blocked task count, and any events where the progress bar has not moved since the previous day (which may indicate stalled execution or missing task updates).
Migration Risks — Top 10
Path: Analytics → Migration Risks
The Risks Top 10 dashboard surfaces the ten highest-scoring risks across all active migration events, ranked by calculated risk score (typically Likelihood × Impact). Each row in the table shows the risk score, risk category (Technical, Dependency, Resource, Commercial, etc.), a description of the risk, the assigned risk owner, and the current mitigation status. The table is designed to be readable in a single glance — a steering committee chair can review the top ten risks in under two minutes.
The dashboard is particularly useful for governance reporting because it aggregates risks from across the entire programme — a risk manager does not need to open each individual migration event to find the most significant risks. When presenting to a steering committee, walk through the risks in order: start with the highest-scoring risk and its mitigation status, then note any risks that have appeared in the Top 10 since the last meeting (new risks) or any that have increased in score (escalating risks). Resolved risks that have dropped out of the Top 10 since the last review represent positive progress and are worth calling out explicitly.
From the Risks Top 10 view, clicking on a risk row opens the full risk detail, where you can update the mitigation status, reassign the owner, or log a risk response. This makes the dashboard actionable, not just informational — governance actions can be taken directly from the reporting view.
Cost Analysis — Cost Allocation
Path: Analytics → Cost Analysis → Cost Allocation
The Cost Allocation sub-module attributes cloud costs to business units, departments, or migration events based on resource tagging and project assignments in the system. The primary view shows a breakdown of total cloud spend by business unit for the selected period, enabling internal chargeback or showback processes. A secondary view groups spend by migration event, showing which waves or projects are driving the highest cloud costs — useful for project-level cost reporting to sponsors.
The "Unallocated" category in this view represents cloud resources that have not been tagged or assigned to a project in the system. A large unallocated spend figure indicates a tagging compliance problem. Untagged resources make chargeback inaccurate and cost accountability impossible. Ensure that resource tagging is a mandatory step in every migration runbook and validate tag compliance using this sub-module after each cut-over.
Cost Analysis — Cost Reduction
Path: Analytics → Cost Analysis → Cost Reduction
The Cost Reduction sub-module is a FinOps tool that identifies specific opportunities to reduce cloud spend. Recommendations are grouped into three categories: idle resources (provisioned compute, storage, or database resources with no or negligible usage), right-sizing opportunities (running workloads on larger instance types than their actual usage requires), and reserved instance or savings plan purchase recommendations (workloads with stable, predictable usage that would benefit from a committed pricing model).
Each recommendation includes the estimated monthly saving, the affected resource or workload, the recommended action, and an effort rating. Sort by estimated saving to identify the quick wins that will deliver the most cost reduction for the least effort. Idle resources typically require a simple termination or deallocation; right-sizing requires a brief analysis of workload performance metrics to confirm the smaller instance will be adequate. Use this dashboard in monthly FinOps review meetings to track the running total of savings identified and actions taken.
Cost Analysis — Cost Usage
Path: Analytics → Cost Analysis → Cost Usage
The Cost Usage sub-module provides a chronological view of actual cloud spend over time. The primary chart shows daily or monthly spend as a trend line, making it easy to spot anomalies — unexpected spikes often correspond to forgotten test environments, runaway auto-scaling events, or large migrations where source and target environments ran simultaneously during cut-over. The view can be filtered by service type (Compute, Storage, Networking, Database, etc.) to identify which categories are driving growth.
The projections section uses current run-rate data to forecast spend over the next 30, 60, and 90 days. Compare the projected figures against your programme budget to assess whether you are on track or need to take corrective action. The comparison view allows you to overlay spend from the previous period (last month, last quarter) against the current period to contextualise whether cost trends are expected given the migration programme's current phase. Rising spend during active migration cut-overs is expected; rising spend after migrations complete (when the source environment should be decommissioned) is a warning sign.
Example Workflow
On Monday morning, ahead of the weekly steering committee meeting, the migration PM opens the Migration Summary dashboard. Wave 1 is showing 73% complete — up from 58% last Monday — with all four move groups on track. Wave 2 planning status shows the move groups have been created and runbooks assigned, with the first T-Minus tasks due in 10 days. She captures a screenshot of the summary view for the steering pack.
She then opens the Risks Top 10 dashboard. Nine of the ten risks are unchanged from last week. However, a new High-severity risk has appeared overnight: a network readiness risk flagged by the infrastructure team indicating that the target network segment for Wave 1's final move group has not yet been validated. The risk owner is listed as the network lead. She adds this risk to the steering committee agenda as a discussion item and contacts the network lead before the meeting to understand the resolution timeline.
In the steering committee meeting, the committee reviews the 73% completion figure and the new network risk. They decide to extend the change freeze window by one week to give the network team time to complete their validation, and the go-live date for the final move group is adjusted accordingly in the system. The PM notes that this is the second time a late network dependency has delayed a move group, and proposes adding a mandatory network readiness check as a T-Minus milestone in all future runbooks.
After the meeting, the PM navigates to Administration → Automation Reports and sets up a weekly automated delivery of the Migration Summary PDF to all steering committee members, scheduled for every Monday at 07:30. Going forward, committee members will receive the summary before each meeting without any manual action required from the PM team.
Tips
Not all stakeholders will have logins to Clarity Migrate — client contacts, senior sponsors, or external assurance reviewers may not be users of the system. Use the export and screenshot features to include dashboard visuals in email updates and status packs. A screenshot of the Migration Summary timeline is far more effective in a stakeholder email than a paragraph of text describing the same information. Set up Automation Reports for regularly recurring distributions so you do not need to manually export every week.
If your team is also maintaining a parallel spreadsheet tracker, a SharePoint status page, or a project management tool alongside Clarity Migrate, you will inevitably end up with conflicting figures. This causes confusion in meetings and erodes confidence in all three sources. Commit to Migration Summary as the authoritative progress view and retire any parallel tracking. The dashboard is only as good as the task updates being entered by the migration team — make sure engineers are updating task status in the Command Centre in real time, not at the end of the week.
The single most time-saving configuration step you can do at the start of a migration programme is to set up Automation Reports (Administration → Automation Reports) for your key recurring distributions: weekly Migration Summary for the steering committee, weekly Risks Top 10 for the programme director, and monthly Cost Analysis for the finance lead. Once configured, these run without any ongoing effort. Setting them up in the first week of the programme means they are running throughout — not just being configured halfway through when the PM is already overloaded with execution activities.
Common Mistakes
Running a parallel spreadsheet tracker alongside Clarity Migrate is one of the most common and most damaging practices on migration programmes. It creates two sources of truth that diverge almost immediately, consumes PM time in keeping both up to date, and leads to conflicting figures in meetings. The moment a stakeholder receives different completion percentages from two different sources in the same week, confidence in both sources collapses. Commit to the dashboards as the single source of truth from day one and invest in making sure task status is being updated in the system in real time.
The Migration Summary dashboard only reflects what has been updated in the system. If engineers complete runbook tasks during a cut-over weekend but update the status in the system on Monday, the dashboard shows 0% progress for the entire weekend. Worse, blocked tasks that are not logged as blocked in the system are invisible to the PM and to governance. Make it a non-negotiable practice that task status is updated in real time during cut-overs, not retrospectively. Brief engineers on this expectation before every migration window and include it in the cut-over run of show.
Reactive use of the Migration Dashboards — opening them only when something has gone wrong — misses their primary value as proactive management tools. The Risks Top 10 dashboard is most useful when reviewed regularly so that escalating risks are caught before they become incidents. The Migration Summary is most useful when reviewed daily so that a slowing completion rate is noticed early rather than only when a deadline is missed. Build a habit of opening both dashboards every morning during active migration phases, even when you expect everything to be going well — that is precisely when the early warning signals are easiest to act on.