What does it take to create a data strategy? Here are some tips from SDS principal consultant Aaron Fuller:

1. First, you have to have a business strategy. Without knowing the mission, vision, values and goals of your business, you cannot build a good data strategy. Your data strategy should be in direct support of your business strategy.
2. Understand what data capabilities are necessary to support the business capabilities in order to meet your business goals. What does the business need to be able to do? How does data support that?
3. Describe your future-state data architecture. What are the data systems and sources that will need to be in place in the future to support your future vision of your business?
4. Take an inventory of your current situation. What do we currently have in terms of data assets?
5. Create your data management roadmap, which describes how you will execute a series of efforts that take you from your current state to your future state. That’s your strategy.
6. Continuously work this process. A business strategy changes all the time. Capabilities change all the time. Priorities of the business goals change all the time. This means that your data management roadmap and strategy need to be constantly evolving to keep up with those things. This isn’t something you do once every year or every three years. This is the main planning tool for data architects and managers.