Imagine building a new city without a 'town plan' yet some people build IT solutions without the data equivalent. The reader will be equipped with 'how to' guidelines to facilitate their business in the building of their own Data Town Plan. Steps include forming a tight team, delivering initial value (potentially in weeks), then enabling ongoing alignment of the business vision with progressive IT solution delivery. Data Town Plans should: * * Be assembled top-down. The big picture is essential. We can tackle details such as data field lengths (or, in the case of the actual town, consider its town hall's kitchen tile colors) later. * Be based on trustworthy patterns, be they for 'customer' or 'product' data structures (or for the town, patterns for universities and hospitals). These high-level patterns are implementable and extensible. * Embrace 'systems thinking' to ensure that the pattern-based elements work well together as an integrated whole for the enterprise (or for the city).
