An approach for establishing enterprise data standards

Avoid the common pitfalls experienced by many organizations that have established enterprise data standards by following a straightforward process. Standards should be defined around a simple framework and be borrowed from third parties or vendors wherever possible to save time. It is better to reuse, rather than reinvent or create standards. To be used successfully, standards must be easy to understand, have a proven track record, be easy to use, and be readily available. Standards should be maintained in a central repository such as Lotus Notes or on an intranet Web site so that they are readily accessible to project teams.