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Q: What are the major components of a data management strategy, as well as thoughts on developing and implementing such a strategy?

Majid Abai's Answer:

An organization data strategy has one and only one goal: to deliver clean, consistent, and timely data to people/applications who need it. As such every component in this strategy should focus on the goal. There are several components of a data management strategy and I have included the highlights here.

• Data quality
• Metadata management
• Data integration and master data management
• Data governance
• Data architecture
• Business intelligence (including data mining, KPIs, balanced score cards and even the latest: competitive intelligence)
• Unstructured data and knowledge management
• Data visualization
• Information search and delivery components
• Database management (including storage, performance, redundancy, disaster/recovery, etc.)

The key point to remember in developing an organizational data strategy is that such strategy can not be developed and implemented without a strong partnership with business.

Sid Adelman's Answer:

• Organization - roles and responsibilities
• Data quality
• Performance
• Security
• Data governance
• Data warehouse
• Management commitment
• Unstructured data
• Data integration
• Metadata

We wrote a book that discusses implementing a data strategy - Data Strategy by Sid Adelman, Larissa Moss and Majid Abai.

Anne Marie Smith's Answer:

The basic premise of the data management approach to application development is that information is like any other business resource - and should be managed as such. Basic principles for managing resources of any type are relatively straightforward and generally recognized by almost all businesses. These principles include the following:

• Requirements for the resource must be anticipated, and fulfilled in anticipation of future need. Otherwise, by the time the resource is needed, the opportunity to acquire it will have disappeared. (Requirements gathering and analysis)
• The business cannot afford an infinite amount of the resource; therefore, the amount must be optimized. In other words, the company should always have enough - but also minimize excess and redundancy. (Optimizing data usage, data accessibility, data understanding and reducing data redundancy across the organization)
• The resource should be shared and leveraged in as many ways as possible, in order to maximize its value while diminishing its overall costs. (Once again, optimizing data reuse and accessibility across the organization)
• The resource must be carefully managed to ensure that its use in the business is prudent, efficient, effective and secure. It must therefore follow a clearly defined life cycle guided by explicit rules. (Developing an appropriate data lifecycle for each subject area that includes retiring data when it has reached the end of its useful life, developing and enforcing data security rules, identifying and implementing appropriate tools for data use, and educating the workforce in the principles of data management.)

An important step toward implementing an effective data management environment is to create, formalize, disseminate and implement a comprehensive set of policies for managing information as a resource based on the principles listed above (or other principles that the organization feels meets their needs). This will enable the business to appreciate fully the significant potential of a well-managed information resource, and begin to escape the common state of expensive disarray in its systems and with the data used/created by those systems. Other important steps in creating an data management strategy would include identifying the mission of data management for the organization, obtaining senior management support for data management, building the principles and policies around the data management mission, developing a data governance approach and creating the roles of data stewards, implementing these activities across the organization and sustaining the data management efforts.

Anne Marie Smith is a highly acclaimed author and speaker in the fields of data stewardship, data governance, data warehousing, data modeling and metadata management. She holds a doctorate in Management Information Systems and has taught at LaSalle University. Smith serves on the board of directors of DAMA International and is an expert advisor to DM Review's Ask the Experts. Smith is the director of education at EWSolutions, a GSA schedule partner and systems integrator dedicated to providing companies and government agencies with best-in-class business intelligence solutions using data warehousing, enterprise architecture and managed metadata environment technologies (www.EWSolutions.com). She may be reached directly via email at AMSmith@EWSolutions.com.

Sid Adelman is a principal in Sid Adelman & Associates, an organization specializing in planning and implementing data warehouses, in data warehouse and BI assessments, and in establishing effective data architectures and strategies. He is a regular speaker at DW conferences. Adelman chairs the "Ask the Experts" column on www.dmreview.com. He is a frequent contributor to journals that focus on data warehousing. He co-authored Data Warehouse Project Management and is the principal author on Impossible Data Warehouse Situations with Solutions from the Experts and Data Strategy. He can be reached at (818) 783-9634 or visit his Web site at www.sidadelman.com.

Majid Abai is executive vice president and director of Information Management and SOA practices at Crescent Enterprise Solutions, a systems integration organization with 12 offices and 300 consultants across the United States. During the past 24 years, he has focused on providing enterprise IT and information strategies as well as implementation of major business systems to Fortune 2000 organizations and government offices. A number of his clients have been listed as the Top Information Management Organizations by Baseline Magazine.

Abai coauthored Data Strategy, a book published by Addison-Wesley, to provide a comprehensive road map in building a sound data strategy for organizations. He has developed and teaches classes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Majid is a member of the Ask the Experts panel in DM Review magazine and a regular contributor to CIOupdate.com. He is continuously invited to consult and lecture on various information management and enterprise architecture subjects globally. You can reach him at majid.abai@crescententerprise.net.