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Migration Release Checklist for Microsoft Fabric

The Release phase transitions your Microsoft Fabric workloads from tested deployments to full production readiness. This phase includes final migration tasks, business communication, acceptance testing, cost optimization, and continuous improvement through a retrospective.

⚠️ Success in this phase is not only technical—it requires stakeholder buy-in, user training, and disciplined governance to ensure sustainable operations.

Goals of the Release Phase​

By the end of this phase, you should:

  • Have rerouted business processes to Microsoft Fabric assets (e.g., Power BI datasets, Eventhouses, Lakehouses).
  • Confirm production readiness through user acceptance testing (UAT).
  • Communicate changes to the organization.
  • Finalize migration efforts and clean up deprecated components (e.g., Synapse, legacy reports, old pipelines).
  • Begin FinOps-based optimization of costs, licenses, and capacity.
  • Conduct a retrospective to inform future migration waves.

Key Activities and Responsible Roles​

ActivityDescriptionResponsible Roles
Plan change communicationHow to inform business units and IT support about the change.Project Manager, Organizational Change Lead, Fabric Product Owner
Conduct business testingValidate that reports, pipelines, semantic models, and queries work as expected.Workload Business Owner, Fabric Developer, Power BI UAT Tester, Data Product Owner
Complete the migrationTransition from replicated or coexisting environments (e.g., Synapse + Fabric) to Fabric only.Fabric Architect, Migration Engineer, Fabric Admin
Optimize costs post-migrationApply FinOps principles: SKU tuning, Power BI license auditing, capacity management, etc.Fabric Admin, Cost Controller, Cloud Ops Manager
Conduct a retrospectiveGather lessons learned to improve governance and future data product launches.Fabric Platform Lead, Governance Architect, Workload Owner

Fabric-Specific Examples​

  • Change Communication: Inform users that Power BI reports are now using DirectLake instead of Import models, or that Synapse pipelines have been replaced by Fabric Data Pipelines.
  • Business Testing: UAT for business-critical reports like finance dashboards or customer segmentation metrics.
  • Cost Optimization: Evaluate usage of Dedicated Capacities (F SKUs), auto-pause for Warehouses, and Power BI Premium workspace consolidation.
  • Retrospective: Discuss latency in Lakehouse ingestion, semantic model design issues, or developer onboarding gaps.

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