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AIDM Methodology for PSC Standards Development

AIDM Methodology for PSC Standards Development

Owned by Vanni Sanvincenti
Last updated: 05 Jun 2025 by Jean-Christophe Cornu

Passenger Standards Conference directive

 

Extract from the Passenger Standards brochure pdf published on IATA Passenger Standards Conference (PSC) /... section “What is the Airline Industry Data Model?: “All data exchange standards being developed today under the governance of the PSC are required to use the Airline Industry Data Model (AIDM) and associated methodology”

The Airline Industry Data Model (AIDM) methodology follows an agile model-driven approach to building modern data exchange standards.  A methodology overview with links to associated detailed resources is presented on the next pages.

All new PSC data exchange standards leverage industry agreed data definitions in the AIDM repository shared by all standards development PSC working groups

The methodology includes 5 stages from initiation to schema generation, with potential iterations.

Business and technical groups work together in order to develop the necessary message schemas defining the standard.

Methodology Stages

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Stage 1 details

Stage 2 details

Stage 3 details

Stage 4 details

Stage 5 details

There are four key roles involved in data exchange standard development – the Initiator, Business Group, Technology Group and the Boards jointly approving the standards

Initiator

Any organization can request a new standard or change to an existing standard under the Conference.  Note that only IATA members and strategic partners may attend the Boards and Groups developing and endorsing the standard.

Business Group

Comprised of airlines and strategic partners responsible for developing the business requirements for a standard.  All data exchange standards must have a business owning group.

Technology Group

Comprised of airlines and strategic partners responsible for supporting Business Groups with the development of technical solutions (models, messages, etc.).

Boards

Joint endorsement between the business owning Board and the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board is required before any new data exchange standard or change to a data exchange standard is effective.

Key individual Roles across and within these entities are shown here

Collaboration Flow between entities

 

Requests for new standards or changes to existing standards can be raised by any organization.  Requests should be routed through a Board or Group secretary if known, or generally through standards@iata.org.  After an internal triage, the secretary will submit the request as an agenda item on the impacted business Board or Group’s workplan to be addressed.

All data exchange standards (such as EDIFACT, XML, or JSON messages) must have a business owning Group. This group will operate under a business owning Board that oversees the business requirements that the data exchange fulfils, including the business process aspects of the standards. No data exchange standard can exist without a business owner.

The business owning Group works together with Groups under the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board (ATSB) to develop any necessary changes to data exchange standards, and both the Business Owning Board and the Architecture and Technology Strategy Board concurrently endorse changes.

This involves a continuous cycle of developing requirements, business processes and procedural standards within the business owning group; and development of technical solutions in accordance with AIDM methodology under the oversight of the groups under the ATSB.

Using agile development cycles, Groups can generate alpha and beta releases at any point throughout the development cycle in order to have full visibility on the nature of changes impacting the messages much earlier in the process before a major release point