An Expert Guide to Using Digital Platforms
How to do Data Modelling for your New Digital Platform
What do you Mean by Data Model?
The Data Model is a description of the data (from a business perspective) that the Digital Platform will manage. It describes as a whole the names, descriptions and relationships between the types of data that your Digital Platform will hold.
It will be very useful to refer to as you develop the Digital Platform and it will also allow the clients of the Digital Platform (other computer systems, Apps, Alexa etc.) to understand the information that they will have access to.
In reality, you will probably create multiple Data Models for different services. For example, you may have different functional models such as a Billing Data Model, a Sales Data Model etc. Or you may have different models based on different regions. There are many different types of Data Model, the one used will depend on your exact business needs and operations.
Formats
Although there may be varying types of Data Model, typically the Data Model will be represented using a standard notation such as a UML diagram or Entity Relationship diagram. This is usually accompanied by a Data Dictionary that gives a more detailed description of each individual piece of information.
An example UML diagram is shown here:
A fragment of the companion Data Dictionary may look like this:
Scoped, Necessarily Complicated and Flexible
As discussed at the start of the article, each iteration of the Digital Platform should be scoped to deliver valuable business functionality that delivers benefits to users of the Digital Platform. As such, the Data Model for the Digital Platform will be similarly versioned. Each iteration will change the overall Data Model in a defined manner.
The Data Model for each iteration should deliver only the data required to deliver the business objectives for that iteration (and the previous iterations). Therefore the Data Model should be as simple as possible, but without shying away from necessary complexity. Many systems have failed over the years due to being over-simplified to the point of not being fit for purpose.
Click below to view the next chapter on how to map data from existing legacy systems for your new Digital Platform.
