~ A Solution ~

• Make a list of everyone who will be using the data. Include your customers and potential readers.
  
  
• Have everyone in the organization write a story that includes what they need to keep track of and what they will do that information. Have the story include how they think others will need the same data.
  
  
• Have everyone list what kinds of things (Entities) they need to keep information about, such as Subjects, Payments, Age Groups, ...
  
  
• Have everyone make a list of what they need to know about each of the things they listed (Attributes).
  
  
• Beside each item in the lists, have everyone describe the format of the data and if there are certain values required. For example, Gender can only be Male and Female.
  
  
• Collect all the papers. This is a good time for a pizza meeting!
  
  
• Find out where everyone's sheets have the same things (Entities) and data about the things (Attributes) and where they are different.
  
  
• Now they are on the way to producing a model that can be used to create a database.

The purpose of this project is to produce a product to take organizations through these steps - more in depth.