Once you have a skeleton semantic data model, the next step is to identify where the information comes from. It is important to try and identify all the potential sources for the entity, and equally important to identify the authoritative source of record. The authoritative source of record is the master of the information.
To identify the source of information, ask the business users where they source information for the reports. If these are new reports, look to key business systems for information, as a starting point.
It is important for the business to tell you what information it requires to support each business process, and the source that it considers to be the truth. Often we go to the technical people to understand where the information is coming from only to find out the business relies on different systems/processes to gather information.
1. For each process and step, identify which entities...