The most difficult and perhaps most important part of planning a data management project is defining the overall project objectives. If the objectives are well defined and clearly understood by management, users, and designer/programmers, the project is more likely to succeed. To make the planning process productive and orderly, it is always best to start by addressing some basic project objectives:

• Does the project represent a major data management effort that will affect the entire company and a significant number of end users, or will it be restricted to select technical disciplines and/or geographic areas?

• Is the project meant to solve a new set of data management requirements, or is it a replacement for a current or previous data management system?

• Must a significant amount of legacy data be migrated to the new system, only new data, or a combination of legacy data and new data?