LDM Slides: Conceptual Data Models - How to Get the Attention of Business Users (for a Technical Audience)

Conceptual Data Models -
How to Get the Attention of Business Users
Donna Burbank
Global Data Strategy Ltd.
Lessons in Data Modeling DATAVERSITY Series
March 23rd, 2017

Global Data Strategy, Ltd. 2017
Donna Burbank
Donna is a recognised industry expert in
information management with over 20
years of experience in data strategy,
information management, data modeling,
metadata management, and enterprise
architecture. Her background is multi-
faceted across consulting, product
development, product management,
brand strategy, marketing, and business
leadership.
She is currently the Managing Director at
Global Data Strategy, Ltd., an international
information management consulting
company that specialises in the alignment
of business drivers with data-centric
technology. In past roles, she has served in
key brand strategy and product
management roles at CA Technologies and
Embarcadero Technologies for several of
the leading data management products in
the market.
As an active contributor to the data
management community, she is a long
time DAMA International member and is
the Past President & Advisor to the DAMA
Rocky Mountain chapter. She was also on
the review committee for the Object
Management Group’s Information
Management Metamodel (IMM) and a
member of the OMG’s Finalization
Taskforce for the Business Process
Modeling Notation (BPMN).
She has worked with dozens of Fortune
500 companies worldwide in the
Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa and
speaks regularly at industry
conferences. She has co-authored two
books: Data Modeling for the
Business and Data Modeling Made Simple
with ERwin Data Modeler and is a regular
contributor to industry publications.
She can be reached at
donna.burbank@globaldatastrategy.com
Donna is based in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
2
Follow on Twitter @donnaburbank
Today’s hashtag: #LessonsDM

Lessons in Data Modeling Series
• January 26th How Data Modeling Fits Into an Overall Enterprise Architecture
• February 23rd Data Modeling and Business Intelligence
• March Conceptual Data Modeling – How to Get the Attention of Business Users
• April The Evolving Role of the Data Architect – What does it mean for your Career?
• May Data Modeling & Metadata Management
• June Self-Service Data Analysis, Data Wrangling, Data Munging, and Data Modeling
• July Data Modeling & Metadata for Graph Databases
• August Data Modeling & Data Integration
• September Data Modeling & MDM
• October Agile & Data Modeling – How Can They Work Together?
• December Data Modeling, Data Quality & Data Governance
3
This Year’s Line Up

A Data Model Facilitates Communication
• A Conceptual Data Model Facilitates Communication between Business and IT
• Focus on (business) audience
• Intuitive display
• Capture the business rules and definitions in your model
• Simplicity does not mean lack of importance
• A simple model can express important concepts
• Ignoring the key business definitions can have negative affects
• A model or tool is only part of the solution
• Communication is key
• Process and Best Practices are critical to achieve consensus and buy-in

Data Models are a Key Part of any Data or Business Strategy
5
A Successful Data Strategy links Business Goals with Technology Solutions
“Top-Down” alignment with
business priorities
“Bottom-Up” management &
inventory of data sources
Managing the people, process,
policies & culture around data
Coordinating & integrating
disparate data sources
Leveraging & managing data for
strategic advantage

Focusing on the Business View
6
Conceptual
Logical
Physical
Purpose
Communication & Definition of
Business Terms & Rules
Clarification & Detail
of Business Rules &
Data Structures
Technical
Implementation on
a Physical Database
Audience
Business Stakeholders
Data Architecture
Business Analysts
DBAs
Developers
Business Concepts
Data Entities
Physical Tables
• When data modeling from a business perspective, focus on the Conceptual & Logical models.

What is in a Name?
• In an industry that’s focused on creating common terms definitions…
• …We’re terrible at creating common terms & definitions. 
7
Or…the Cobblers Children Have No Shoes
• In a survey of data professionals, the most popular names for
the Conceptual (high-level) model included1:
• Conceptual Data Model 59%
• Subject Area Model 12%
• Business Data Model 10%
• Enterprise Data Model 6%
• Other names 13%
1

Technical & Business Metadata
• Technical Metadata describes the structure, format, and rules for storing data
• Business Metadata describes the business definitions, rules, and context for data.
• Data represents actual instances (e.g. John Smith)
8
CREATE TABLE EMPLOYEE (
employee_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
department_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
employee_fname VARCHAR(50) NULL,
employee_lname VARCHAR(50) NULL,
employee_ssn CHAR(9) NULL);
CREATE TABLE CUSTOMER (
customer_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
customer_name VARCHAR(50) NULL,
customer_address VARCHAR(150) NULL,
customer_city VARCHAR(50) NULL,
customer_state CHAR(2) NULL,
customer_zip CHAR(9) NULL);
Technical Metadata
John Smith
Business Metadata
Data
Term Definition
Employee
An employee is an individual who currently
works for the organization or who has been
recently employed within the past 6 months.
Customer
A customer is a person or organization who
has purchased from the organization within
the past 2 years and has an active loyalty card
or maintenance contract.

Metadata is Needed by Business Stakeholders
9
Making business decisions on accurate and well-understood data
80% of users of metadata are from
the business, according to the
recent DATAVERSITY survey.

My Favorite Quote from a Business Stakeholder
10
You mean you’re NOT doing
this already??
Often the biggest challengers to conceptual data modeling & metadata come from IT, not the business.

Why Does Conceptual Modeling Matter?
• You’ve been tasked to assist in the creation of a Business Intelligence (BI) reporting application for Customers.
• Technical and political challenges exist
 Numerous systems have been built already—different platforms and databases
 Parties cannot agree on a single definition of what a ‘customer’ is
• Our Proposed Solution: Start with a Conceptual Data Model
• What is the definition of customer?
• Where is the data stored?
• How is it structured?
• Who uses or owns the data?
Data Warehouse BI Report:
Customers by Region
• What are the definitions of key business terms?
• What do I want to report on?
• How do I optimize the database for these reports?
Data Modeling helps answer:
For Data Warehousing For BI Reporting
Data Modeling helps answer:Show me all
customers by region
Source Systems
Relational Model
Dimensional Model
An Example

Building a Conceptual Data Model
• We start with a very simple data model, with just one object on it, called “Customer”.
• We use an ER Model and show business definitions
Starting with the basics
Too Simple??

Too Simple?
• Our team thought so, so went ahead and focused on the technical integration, including:
• Reverse engineering a physical model from each system
• Creating ETL scripts
• Migrating the data into a data warehouse
• Building a reporting system off of the data
• The results?
• This implementation went “perfectly”, with no errors in the scripts, no data type
inconsistencies, no delays in schedule, etc.
• We built a complex BI reporting system to show our upper management the results.
• We even sent out a welcome email to all of our customers, giving them a 50% off coupon,
and thanking them for their support.

Focusing on the Business
• Until we showed the report to the business sponsor:
• We can’t have 2000 customers in this region! I know we only have around 400!
• Why is Jones’ Tire on this list? They are still evaluating our product! Sales was negotiating a
10% discount with them, and you just sent them a 50% coupon!?!?
• You just spent all of that money in IT to build this report with bad data???

Oops!
• We were mixing current customers, with prospects (non-customers).
• We just sent a discount coupon to 1600 of the wrong people!
• We gave upper management a report showing the wrong figure for our total number of
customers!
• We are now significantly over budget to have to go back and fix this!!
• We started over, this time with a Conceptual Data Model

The Importance of Business Definitions
From Data Modeling for the Business by
Hoberman, Burbank, Bradley, Technics
Publications, 2009

Use the Language of Your Audience
• When communicating with business stakeholders, it’s important to display data models in a way
that’s intuitive to them
• PowerPoint-style Conceptual Data Models
• Use Business Terminology
• Avoid Excess Detail
17
Gaining Buy-In

Keep It Simple
18

The Eternal Question…
19
Can and Should a Businessperson
learn Data Modeling notation?

When?
What is an Entity?
The “Who, What, Where, When, Why” of the Organization – the Nouns
Entity: A classification of the types of objects found in the
real world --persons, places, things, concepts and events – of
interest to the enterprise. 1
1 DAMA Dictionary of Data ManagementWho?
How?
Where?
What?
Product
Salesperson
Invoice
Why?
Order
Period
Location

Attributes
• An Attribute is a piece of information about or a characteristic of an Entity.
Attributes provide more detail about an Entity
Attributes
Entity
Employee • Employee Identifier
• Employee Last Name
• Employee First Name
• Employee Hire Date
• Employee Signed Employment Contract
• Employee Drivers License Photo
Entity
Attributes

— Relationships are the “lines” on a data model
Relationships are the “Verbs” of the Organization
• Relationships define the data-centric Business Rules of an organization
• An employee can work for more than one department.
• A customer can have more than one account.
• Sales are reported monthly.
• A department can contain more than one employee.
Defining Business Rules
— Relationships are the “verbs” in a sentence.
—A department can contain more than one employee.

Deciphering Cardinality
Think of how a child might answer the question “How many?”
One = 1 finger
More than one = several fingers

Supertypes & Subtypes
• Some Entities naturally split into Sub-Types in a Organization:
• Exclusive: i.e. “Either/Or” - a member of the supertype can only one subtype role. For example, a
Vehicle can be a Car or a Truck, but not both.
• Inclusive: i.e. “And” - a member of the supertype can play more than one subtype role. For example, a
Person can be both a Customer and Employee.
24
Vehicle
Customer
Person
EmployeeCar Truck
Exclusive Inclusive

Use the Language of Your Audience
Use Business Terms, not Theoretical Ones
25
Use Business Terminology
May be academically correct, but too
vague to be useful for business users.This?
Or
This?
Or
This?

Keep the Focus on the Business
• Debate actual differences in business meaning, not academic theory
• Determine why differences occur:
• Is this a different entity?
• Different names for the same entity?
• A Supertype / Subtype relationship?
• Etc.
26
Fight the Right Battles
VS. VS. VS.

The Importance of Definitions
• Definitions are as important as the data elements themselves.
• Many data-related business issues are caused by unclear or ill-defined terms
27
What do you mean by
“customer”?
We’re calculating “total sales”
differently in each region!
Sales is using a different
“monthly calendar” than
Finance.
How are we defining a
“household”?
What’s an “equity
derivative”?
What’s a “PEG ratio”?
“API” as in “Application Programming Interface?”
or “American Petroleum Institute”? Or a bee?
What’s the difference between an
“ingredient” and a “raw material”?

Store & Display Definitions in a Data Model
28
• Data Models are a great place to store business definitions
• Display them on the model for a business audience
• Store them in the model repository for reuse across the organization (various users, tools, etc.)

Human Metadata
• Much business metadata and the history of the business exists in employee’s heads.
• It is important to capture this metadata in an electronic format for sharing with others.
• Avoid the dreaded “I just know”
29
Avoid the dreaded “I just know”
Part Number is what used to
be called Component
Number before the
acquisition.
Business Glossary
Metadata Repository
Data Models
Etc.

Better Definitions Drive Better Communication
• Wouldn’t it be helpful if we did this in daily life, too?
• i.e. “Let’s go on a family vacation!”
Person Concept Definition
Father Vacation An opportunity to take the time to achieve new goals
Mother Vacation Time to relax and read a book
Jane Vacation A chance to get outside and exercise
Bobby Vacation Time to be with friends
Donna Vacation More time to build data models
Ian Holiday You Americans use crazy words for things

A Data Model Is a Visual Representation of Core Concepts
31From Data Modeling for the Business by Hoberman, Burbank, Bradley, Technics Publications, 2009
A data model is a graphical view of the core concepts important to the organization.
Humans tend to think in Pictures.

Global Data Strategy, Ltd. 2017 32
Customer
Prospect
Salesperson
Is Father Of
Is Evaluating
Sells
Household
Product
Buys
Buys
Customer
Support Rep
Supports
Sells To
Is Trained On
Client
A Data Model Describes a Business
• When working with a business audience, the importance of a data model is in communication.
• Use creative ways to show models to a business audience.
• The data model should tell the “story” of the business.
Be Creative in your Data Model Presentation

Tell a Story
• Humans have evolved over time as storytellers
• We can’t even sleep without dreaming in stories.
• No one cares about your data model…
• … but they do care about the RESULTS of your data model
• … relate the model to a real world impact or scenario..i.e.
“story”
33
What impact does the data model have on the business?
Humans are Storytellers.
From Data Modeling for the Business by Hoberman, Burbank, Bradley, Technics Publications, 2009

Business Executive
• Results-Oriented
• Optimistic – Identifies opportunities
• “I’m busy.”
• “What’s the business opportunity?”
Data Architect
• Focused on architecture, data, technology
• Often seen as finding problems, not
solutions
• “Let me tell you about my data model!”
Data Advisor
• Focused on solutions, business, information
• Highlights issues & opportunities around
data
• “Less me show you how data can help your
business!”
The world is going to end if your
model is not in 3rd normal form!!
If you link your Customer data with
your Product usage stats, we can
increase sales.
What’s in it for me?
Be More “Data Advisor” and Less “Data Architect”

We Do It, Too – We Care about Results, not Details!
35
Do we really care about the details of other people’s jobs?
We recently switched to accrual-
based accounting from cash-based
accounting to optimize…
I just want my
paycheck.
Accountant Data Architect

The “Elevator Pitch”
36
How Would you Describe Your Project to the CEO in 2 minutes?
VS.
I’m working on a project to
rationalize metadata across data
sources to ensure consistency…
Zzzzzzzz…
I’m working on a project to get a
more complete view of
customers for the big online
marketing campaign…
Interesting!

Summary
• With Conceptual Models, the focus is on the business
• Communication with business stakeholders
• Identification of business definitions & rules
• Tailor your presentation & language to suit your audience
• Graphics and visual presentation are easy to understand
• Use Business terminology, not theoretical or technical terms
• Business people can understand data models if used correctly
• Work on your “Elevator Pitch”
• Tell a “story” that relates to an actual business opportunity or problem
• Focus on results
• Eschew Obfuscation!

Contact Info
• Email: donna.burbank@globaldatastrategy.com
• Twitter: @donnaburbank
@GlobalDataStrat
• Website: www.globaldatastrategy.com
• Company Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-data-strategy-ltd
• Personal Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnaburbank
38

About Global Data Strategy, Ltd
• Global Data Strategy is an international information management consulting company that specializes
in the alignment of business drivers with data-centric technology.
• Our passion is data, and helping organizations enrich their business opportunities through data and
information.
• Our core values center around providing solutions that are:
• Business-Driven: We put the needs of your business first, before we look at any technology solution.
• Clear & Relevant: We provide clear explanations using real-world examples.
• Customized & Right-Sized: Our implementations are based on the unique needs of your organization’s
size, corporate culture, and geography.
• High Quality & Technically Precise: We pride ourselves in excellence of execution, with years of
technical expertise in the industry.
39
Data-Driven Business Transformation
Business Strategy
Aligned With
Data Strategy
Visit www.globaldatastrategy.com for more information

DATAVERSITY Training Center
• Learn the basics of Metadata Management and practical tips on how to apply metadata
management in the real world. This online course hosted by DATAVERSITY provides a series of six
courses including:
• What is Metadata
• The Business Value of Metadata
• Sources of Metadata
• Metamodels and Metadata Standards
• Metadata Architecture, Integration, and Storage
• Metadata Strategy and Implementation
• Purchase all six courses for $399 or individually at $79 each.
Register here
• Other courses available on Data Governance & Data Quality
40
Online Training Courses
Metadata Management Course
Visit: http://training.dataversity.net/lms/

Lessons in Data Modeling Series
• January 26th How Data Modeling Fits Into an Overall Enterprise Architecture
• February 23rd Data Modeling and Business Intelligence
• March Conceptual Data Modeling – How to Get the Attention of Business Users
• April The Evolving Role of the Data Architect – What does it mean for your Career?
• May Data Modeling & Metadata Management
• June Self-Service Data Analysis, Data Wrangling, Data Munging, and Data Modeling
• July Data Modeling & Metadata for Graph Databases
• August Data Modeling & Data Integration
• September Data Modeling & MDM
• October Agile & Data Modeling – How Can They Work Together?
• December Data Modeling, Data Quality & Data Governance
41
This Year’s Line Up

Questions?
42
Thoughts? Ideas?

LDM Slides: Conceptual Data Models - How to Get the Attention of Business Users (for a Technical Audience)

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LDM Slides: Conceptual Data Models - How to Get the Attention of Business Users (for a Technical Audience)