Business Rule Management
It is uncommon for organisations to manage business rules as formal assets of the organisation. Until recently business rules have avoided management focus, even within IT, because they have either been ignored or regarded as intangible. Even systems development methodologies give little regard to business rules. For instance OMG's UMLv1.5, Section 3.22.3 appears to exclude Business Rules from the methodology:
"Additional compartments may be supplied as a tool extension to show other pre-defined or user defined model properties (for example to show business rules …) … but UML does not define them …"
Moreover, IT has tended to focus on data and process, so that any business rules are intermingled with and generally subservient to these traditional design elements.
Recently however, a particular class of business rule is gaining recognition as something discrete, tangible, and at least peer with data and process. In fact both data and process are seen to respond to this class of business rule - the 'decision'. With increasing recognition of decisions as 'first class (design) citizens', businesses now have something tangible to focus on and the tools to manage them. Tools like Idiom are emerging to help define and manage these new design elements. The management of the decision life-cycle has been encapsulated in the new term 'decisioning'.
Decisioning is evolving as a finite and well defined concept that lends itself to explicit management practice. Decisions can be uniquely identified and described, creating an inventory of decisions that are valuable IP assets of the organisation. It can be argued that decisions represent the core IP of the organisation - how an organisation makes its decisions is critical to differentiating the organisation and its behaviour. To highlight the importance of decisions, imagine a competitor having an explicit description of your company's decisioning so that they could predict every decision you make - they would be able to anticipate and out-manoeuvre your every action.
When decisions are recognised as valuable IP assets of the business, it follows that they need to be owned and managed to assure their security, quality, and appropriate utilisation in the interests of the business. Processes for collating, classifying, defining, and automating decisions are now practical and achievable with new tools.
Having committed to direct management of decisioning, the organisation can also look forward to far reaching improvements in the coordination and strategic alignment of its automated decision making.
Find out how the Idiom Decision Suite can help with Business Rule Management