DATABASE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE - Database Design and Development: An Essential Guide for IT Professionals - page 103

Who Does the Planning?
The senior executives of an organization think through the future opportunities and
challenges. Every year most organizations come up with a long-term plan for 3-5
years; some even prepare 10-year plans. The senior management takes the primary
responsibility for producing the long-term plans. The CEO of the organization is
intimately involved and usually directs the planning. Some institutions have sepa-
rate planning departments to collect data for the planning process and coordinate
the overall planning effort.
What has the long-term business plan to do with the database project? The pro-
posed database for the organization is not meant to be static. Once implemented,
the database system will have to grow and accommodate requirements relating to
the foreseeable future. It should be able to conform to the direction and goals set
forth in the long-term business plan. It must be able to anticipate the data require-
ments for the next three to five years.
We have already noted that one subphase of project planning deals with inter-
preting the organization's long-term plan and applying it to the database project.
The other subphase is the consolidation of all requirements and preparation of the
database plan. Generally, organizations carry out these two subphases by assigning
responsibilities as noted below.
• Senior Managers of the IT Department review the long-term plan, estimate the
data that would be required to support the long-term goals and objectives, and
highlight the business areas that would need the support from the proposed
database system. The CIO and CTO are likely to be part of the group of the
organization's senior executives who created the long-term plan. Therefore,
these executives contribute greatly in the interpretation of the long-term plan
for the purpose of relating it to the database project.
• Usually, companies form a special team within IT to prepare the database plan.
This team consists of the heads of data administration, database administra-
tion, database design, and application development. Some others with special-
ized skills in relevant hardware and software may also be included in the
planning team.
Impact of the Business Plan
We have emphasized the significance of applying the long-term business plan to the
database project. How exactly does the business plan impact the proposed database
system? First of all, what do long-term business plans contain? We will briefly review
the normal contents of a long-term business plan and then see how each element
in the plan can affect the planning for the database.
Among other components, here are the major contents of a long-term business
plan:
• Scope and duration of the plan
• General goals
• Specific objectives