Top 4 Cutover Interview Questions

Browse 4 real-world technical and behavioral interview questions about Cutover. Review scenarios, edge cases, and architectural best practices.

Both the old and the new system are running side by side. How do you decide the day you switch customers over, and what does rollback mean once you have?

Write the entry criteria before the parallel run begins so the decision is a checklist rather than a mood, ramp through a stepped population with an abort condition at each step, and recognise that rollback stops meaning redeploy once the new system takes its first authoritative write.

hardscenario

You are moving a bank's existing accounts onto a new core platform. How do you cut over so there is never a moment when a customer's true balance is unknown?

Prove the new platform's opening position equals the old platform's closing position, account by account and in control totals, before you accept a single instruction on it. Balances are the tractable half - standing instructions, accrued interest and payments in flight across the boundary are what break.

harddesign

How do you replace a system that cannot be switched off?

Put a routing facade in front of the old system, migrate one business capability at a time, and treat dual-write as a reconciliation problem rather than two inserts: name a writer of record at every moment, shadow-compare before flipping reads, and sequence slices so value lands early.

harddesign

UAT exit criteria have not been met and the cutover is nine days away. What do you put in front of the steering group?

Convert the open defects into business consequence and volume rather than counts, construct a phased or partial cutover as a real third option, and give the steering group one explicit recommendation with the conditions that would change it. A date treated as fixed while exit criteria stay negotiable is the failure to name.

hardscenario