Business Rule Solutions, LLC
by Ronald G. Ross
Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal, www.BRCommunity.com Chair, Business Rules Forum Conference, Oct. 17-21, Washington DC
References:
Business Rule Concepts (3rdEd),
Ronald G. Ross, 2009, BRSolutions.com
Principles of the Business Rule Approach
Ronald G. Ross, Addison-Wesley, 2003
What You Need to Know about
Decisioning with Business Rules
Mr. Ross is recognized internationally as the “father of business rules.” He has served as Co-Chair of the annual
Business Rules Forum Conference since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in
the 1980s, and an editor of the two landmark BRG papers, “The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance in a Volatile World” (2000, revised 2005, 2007) and the “Business Rules Manifesto” (2003). He is also active in OMG standards development for business rules and business models, including SBVR.
Mr. Ross (RonRoss.info) is the author of eight professional books. His newest are: Business Rule Concepts (2009), a third edition of his popular, easy-to-read handbook, and Principles of the Business Rule Approach, Addison-Wesley (2003). An earlier work, The Business Rule Book (1994, 1997), was the seminal work in the field. Mr. Ross received his M.S. in information science from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his B.A. from Rice U.
Ronald G. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRSolutions.com). BRS provides workshops, consulting, publications, and methodology supporting business analysis, business rules, business vocabulary, decisioning, and rule management. His popular public seminars, the first on business rules (starting 1996) and the longest-running in the industry, are given through AttainingEdge in North America and IRM-UK in Europe.
Mr. Ross co-develops ProteusR, BRS’s landmark methodology, featuring numerous innovative techniques including the popular RuleSpeakR(free on RuleSpeak.com, now also in Spanish, German and Dutch). These are the latest offerings in a 35-year career that has consistently featured creative, business-driven solutions.
Mr. Ross is also Executive Editor and regular columnist of BRCommunity.com and its flagship on-line publication, Business Rules Journal. Sponsored by BRS, BRCommunity.com is a non-commercial vertical community for professionals working in the field. Mr. Ross was formerly Editor of the Data Base Newsletter from 1977 to 1998.
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
One Organization’s Achievement
Financial Services – Credit Card Fraud Detection
Business Set-UpSuspicious transactions kicked out to fraud specialists for manual inspection. Fraud specialists are an expensive and largely non-scalable resource.
Scenario
The bad guys pick up and move shop from Idaho to Manhattan.
Transactions deemed suspicious by zip code yield a 10x increase in volume. Additional selection criteria (e.g., location of store, type of store, frequency of use, size of transaction, etc.) introduced to keep the volume of kick-outs
relatively constant.
Achievement
Before rules engine … elapsed time: 30-60 days.
After rules engine … elapsed time: 3-6 days.
What is Possible?
Software Release Cycle
Separating the
Business Rule vs.
Software Release
Life Cycles
Business Workers Business Rule Life Cycle ITWhat is Necessary!
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
One Organization’s Achievement
Home Mortgage Department – Major U.S. Bank
Automated Decisioning DepartmentOne of the most mature in the world.
“It's not an accident that the bank is in good standing in this financial crisis.”
Achievement
Software released about twice a year by IT.
Rules changed every 1-3 weeks by business analysts.
What is Possible?
Governing Rules Practicable Rules Automated Rules Managing the Business Operating the Business Running the Systems
Business Traceability = Requirements Traceability
Traceability!
Accountability!
Transparency!
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Business Workers
What is Necessary!
Reference:
Business Rule Concepts (3rd Ed.), Chapter 3
General Rulebook System (GRBS)
Rulebook Management: the skills,
techniques and processes needed to express, analyze, trace, retain, and manage the decision logic used in day-to-day business operations
Focus: Manage decision logic as
a business problem rather than a technical problem.
Goals: Ensure that ...
Basic business know-how is always
accessible to those duly authorized.
Business policies, regulations, and
contractual obligations are interpreted in a faithful, repeatable and transparent fashion.
Software Release Cycle
Testing
Business Workers Business Rule Life Cycle ITWhat is Possible?
“We do enough analysis of new business rules, that it is literally not worth the cost of going through traditional IT testing.”
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
$
$
$
$
When is the best time to find you
have anomalies in your rules?
Business Leads Logic Architects Tech. Engineers Technicians Workers Business Model (CIM) Computable Model (PIM) Platform-Spec. Model (PSM) “Code” Functioning Bus. Capacity
What is Necessary!
Rule Anomalies …
An order over $1,000 must not be accepted on credit without a credit check. An order over $1,000 may be accepted on credit only with a credit check.
Linguistic Equivalences
Modal Equivalences
Logical Equivalences
Subsumations
Conflicts
A permanent employee must receive a salary.
An employee who is permanent must receive a salary.
A high-risk customer must not place a rush order.
A rush order must not be placed by a high-risk customer.
A rush order must have a destination. An order must have a destination.
A shipment must include more than 1 order.
An out-of-state shipment may include only 1 order.
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Expression Example
Discourse-Dependent Rule:
Please mute your phone.
Discourse-Independent Rule:
A webinar attendee must mute their phone while not speaking.
A best practice for expressing rules …
Business rules must be understandable ‘out of context’.
Meaning
What is Necessary!
Say fully what you
mean …
… and mean fully
what you say.
Origin:
Developed by Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRS) starting in 1996. Applied in hundreds of projects since that time.
Standardization:
One of three reference notations used in the creation of SBVR. Fully consistent with that standard.
RuleSpeak
®… for business-friendly business rules in structured natural language … in English (2.0), Dutch, Spanish & German … released April, 2009 … free on www.RuleSpeak.com
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Business Rules … Criteria for making
minute-to-minute business decisions
Human Behavior
“… criteria for conduct or action.” Business rule:
A gold customer must be allowed access to the warehouse.
Is this a gold customer or not? … Yes!
Classifications and Computations
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a gold customer if the customer places more than 12 orders
during a calendar year.
Let this customer in or not? … Yes!
Design Decisions = Business Decisions
Software Vendor:
“… Depends on your definition of ‘business rule’...
… If I change a definitional rule like ‘customers only have 1 address’ to ‘customers can have multiple
addresses’ …
… then that can have deep consequences on [automated] systems.”
Business Rule Solutions, LLC Claimant Take Claim Information Verify Basic Claim Information Adjudicate Claim makes claim if valid claim if claim denied if fraud suspected if claim accepted if policy number missing if policy number invalid if policy expired If claimant name invalid If no location given If …
How many “ifs”?!?
How many rules?!?
no no no no no yes yes yes yes yes Never embed
diamonds (or series of diamonds!) in your business process models. These diamonds always represent business rules …
which are best defined independently. Embedding diamonds will hopelessly complicate your model.
What is Necessary!
“Anytime you stick your business rules in your process, you’re dead.”
Rule: A claim can be considered valid
only if it has all the following:
An active policy. A claimant.
An incident.
Decision-making may involve a very large number of business rules!
Verify Basic Claim Information Adjudicate Claim if valid claim
A best practice for business process models …
What is Possible?
Business Rules …
Govern the interpretation of a conditional.
Provide criteria for branch points in the business
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
What is Possible?
Claimant Claimant Claimant Take Claim Information Verify Basic Claim Information Notify Claimant Request Additional Information Notify Claimant Adjudicate Claim Claimant Make Payment Claims Clerk Adjudicator Claims Payment System makes claim if invalid claim if insufficient information if response if valid claim if no response if claim denied Upon suspicion of fraud if fraud suspected if claim approved if no fraud detected Process Claims“… the tasks required for an enterprise to satisfy a planned response to a business event … … from beginning to end ... …with a focus
on the roles of actors, rather than the actors’ day-to-day job”
Janey Conkey Frazier
Incremental
Development!
“The staff at GE observed that flowcharts, formulas, and narratives were
inadequate when working with complex logic.”
Reported in Communications of the ACM, Vol 4, No 11 (November, 1961), pp. 516-520.
“The … design and implementation practices of software engineering
have a weak point: the design of the internal logic of the module or segment. Such … designs should be disciplined, easily understood, and checkable.”
Decision Tables in Software Engineering, by Richard B. Hurley, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1983, p 1.
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price Offering“Making information more readily available is important, but making better decisions based on information is what pays the bills.”
Smart (Enough) Systems by James Taylor & Neil Raden Prentice-Hall, 2007, p. 337
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price OfferingWhat is Necessary!
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Capture
Analyze
Deploy
Execute
Price Offering General Rulebook System (GRBS)Solutions!
Faster deployment… Decision Cycle Time
Rule engines
… Business Rules
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA)
“pricing” Business Rules Repository Decision ServiceThe business rules are now...
Traceable Re-usable
Improvable...
Auditable...
What is Possible?
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) ??
“pricing” Business Rules Repository Decision ServiceWhat is Necessary!
“Business events are a more natural way for business people to express requirements than 'services’ … SOA is a flawed paradigm. The focus should be on 'what event is happening', rather than 'what service do I need'.”
Mike Gualtieri Forrester
Rule: The applicable sales tax rate must be the percent in
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table for a given year and county.
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table
County
Year Harkin Lopes Qwan Quail
2008 6.95 8.2 7.35 4.0 2009 6.73 8.3 9.0 4.5 2010 6.15 8.4 9.0 5.0 2011 6.15 8.3 9.0 5.5 2012 6.15 8.4 6.75 6.0 2013 6.15 8.2 6.75 6.75 2014 5.75 8.2 6.75 7.0 2015 5.95 8.4 7.5 7.25
What is Possible?
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
About Decision Tables
Human Behavior
“… criteria for conduct or action.” Business rule:
A gold customer must be allowed access to the warehouse.
Is this a gold customer or not? … Yes!
Classifications and Computations
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a gold customer if the customer places more than 12 orders
during a calendar year.
Let this customer in or not? … Yes!
Three Multi-Value
Criteria
One Table
Observation:
This is the natural format for
decision tables in the real world.
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Rule: A library card may be used to check-out a book only if the book is owned by a library for
which the card is authorized.
Library Fact Model
Business Rules
encompass ...
Terms typically 100s Facts typically 10X Terms Rules typically 10X Facts library card assessment person borrower book librarian library is used to check-out works for makes owns is made for borrower type holds is charged against is authorized for organization fee amount is owned by Legend = Term (+ Definition) = Fact = CategoryWhat is Possible?
An ASSESSMENT is a specific monetary charge against a Library Card for abuse of books or borrowing privileges.
A BOOK is any document, publication or work in any media that is held by or available through a Library.
A BORROWER is a Person or Organization of interest to a Library that can potentially borrow Books.
A BORROWER TYPE is the category of a Borrower -- i.e., Person or Organization. A FEE AMOUNT is the total amount of an Assessment.
A LIBRARIAN is a certified professional who can work in a Library in an official capacity.
A LIBRARY is a repository of Books and/or a lender of Books to Borrowers. A LIBRARY CARD is an agreement between a Borrower and a Library indicating that the parties agree to abide by the Library’s book-lending rules.
An ORGANIZATION is legal entity that can act independently of particular persons. A PERSON is an individual who acts in his own behalf.
Defining Terms:
The Concepts Catalog (Glossary)
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Case from the Electrical Transmission Industry
… “
Load
”
Business Meaning
1. A network component that uses energy
2. The operating level of a network component that uses energy
3. A party that owns a network component that uses energy
4. A state of a network component 5. A part of the output of a
generating resource
6. Constancy (“firmness”) of energy usage
7. Demand for energy
… Context of Business Usage … Physical facilities that use energy
…Amounts of energy that physical facilities use
… Organizations participating in the energy marketplace
… Resources that can sometimes use energy (“net”)
… Measurements of energy production
… Projections of energy production and usage
… Aggregate network estimates
What is Necessary!
“Our people think they are talking to each other using the same language … but they often aren’t!”
Article 3. Deliberate
Knowledge, Not A
By-Product
3.1. Rules build on facts, and facts build on concepts as expressed by terms.
Reference: Business Rule Concepts,
Business logic is built in
building-block fashion.
Business rules express
basic business knowledge.
Business Rules Manifesto
The Principles of Rule Independence
by Business Rules Group, 2003
www.BusinessRulesGroup.org
Business Rule Solutions, LLC
About Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Ronald G. Ross Gladys S.W. Lam
Over 14 Years Exclusively in Business Rules
Co-Founders
More Ways to Find Out More …
Oct. 17-21, 2010
Washington, DC Public Seminars …Ottawa – Sept. 21-24
Public Seminar …
