Lessons Learned in Aligning Data and Model Evolution in Collaborative Information Systems

Today's enterprises have to align their information systems continuously with their dynamic business and IT environment. Collaborative information systems address this challenge by involving diverse users in managing the application's data as well as its conceptual model. In this sense, both the data and the model co-evolve. There are different approaches for aligning data and model evolution, wherein either the data is aligned to the model, or vice versa. In this work, we present a hybrid approach supporting both strategies and elaborate on our experiences of applying the approach in projects for over five years. Thereby, we discuss challenges and issues faced in those projects, and how we addressed them by redesigning and reimplementing the approach. We formulate those issues and respective solutions as lessons learned, which not only hold for the concrete system which was applied in those projects, but which should guide the design and implementation of all software systems supporting the co-evolution of data and model.