I often have to design XML schemas for different XML-bases import routines. It is clear that XML schemas will evolve over time or they could contain bugs to be fixed, so it
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/07/21/design.html provides good guidelines and XML Schema 1.1 enables 'versioning' through conditional inclusion (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema11-1/#cip).