[sofixa]

> such as moving everyone over in one go.

It's the core banking system of a big bank. Handling consistent state between the old and new systems while progressively migrating customers would probably have been extremely complex. They also get to have a maintenance window (few people will complain if they get warned their bank and all transactions won't work for 2 hours in the middle of the night on Monday). A "big bang" migration makes more sense, if everything is properly prepared and tested, which it wasn't.

[PeterisP]

I've been a part of multiple "big bang" migrations in banking (generally scheduled to the coincidences of local banking holidays next to a weekend, so you can afford multiple days of semi-downtime) and all of them had explicit multiple testing gates for potential rollback during the migration, where after pretty much all the stuff is on the new system, the board convenes and after looking at the difficulties (there inevitably are some unexpected difficulties) make the decision whether they "accept" the switch to the new system or postpone the switch.

Part of your preparation and testing is the rollback of a partial migration - if you're irreversibly committed to the "big bang" before you know its outcome, then your preparation and testing has failed.

[JackFr]

> A "big bang" migration makes more sense, if everything is properly prepared and tested, which it wasn't.

That sounds like ‘A “big bang” migration makes more sense, if it works.’

Your rollback plan should never be an afterthought. Your rollback plan should be designed like you expect to use it. If your rollback plan is “Burn the ships” and fix-forward, you shouldn’t be working at a bank.

[flerchin]

Definitely been the plan at a variety of places I've worked. Including a bank.