Organizational concepts and measures for the evaluation of data modeling

This chapter presents a concept for the evaluation of data modeling which is based on existing theoretical approaches and three empirical st dies conducted or supervised by the author. The main results of these studies with respect to evaluation suggest to extend existing approaches for the evaluation of data models. It is necessary o focus more on organizational issues of data modeling, more on process instead of product quality, to consider different application scenarios of data modeling as well as to distinguish the enterprise-wide evaluation of data modeling from the evaluation of single projects using data modeling. The evaluation concept presented here focuses on the evaluation of single data modeling projects and consists of recommendations for the evaluation procedure, persons involved, instruments, the design of important organizational dimensions as well as some concrete measures of process and product quality. INTRODUCTION In a time where the amount of data managed in organizations explodes at an ever-increasing speed, issues of data management become more and more important. This chapter appears in the book, Developing Quality Complex Database Systems: Practices, Techniques and Technologies by Shirley Becker. Copyright © 2001, Idea Group Publishing. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1117, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB7993 IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING