The challenges of strategic data planning in practice: an interpretive case study

Many organisations have had difficulty with strategic data planning despite strong arguments about its value. A number of empirical studies of strategic data planning have identified various factors important to its success but few have presented detailed contextual explanations. This paper reports an in-depth, interpretive case study which examines the strategic data planning process in a large Australian bank. The paper explains why strategic data planning is such a difficult undertaking and suggests three important implications for practitioners. First, both business managers and information systems staff find the output data architecture difficult to understand, and improved representations and explanations of the data architecture should be used. Second, strategic data planning is a complex social activity and an understanding of the organisational context within which it takes place is critical to its success. Third, strategic data planning may not be the best way to build a data architecture, and other approaches which facilitate participation should be considered.

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