A decision management tool vendor recently wrote:

“The relation between business rules and decisions is I think pretty well agreed by all – it’s just that some focus on 1 or the other, and some both – any “disagreement” is more on the value in the different approaches.”

I respectfully disagree (strongly).  There are fundamental differences between decision rules and behavioral rules including these:

1. Behavioral rules are usually one of a kind. They don’t fit in decision tables. Some might appear in decision models if you are concerned about such things as integrity (will the DMN standard be?), but the large majority don’t.

2. Decisions are generally single point of determination for any given real-world case. Most behavioral rules are multi point of determination, meaning they could be violated under quite different circumstances.

3. The detection of violations of behavioral rules should be automatic and event-based. There’s no “decision” involved in the detection … it should be automatic. (This is where the current generation of rule engines … mostly based on 1980s expert-system thinking … fall woefully short. It’s also probably one reason they haven’t become more mainstream in industry mindshare.)

4. Behavioral rules generally have a different source than decision rules … laws, regulations, contracts, agreements, deals, certifications, warranties … and business policies. Decision rules sometimes arise from those sources, but if so, have limited coverage. Decision rules in contrast often arise from the heads of knowledge workers and inspection of big data and event streams. (Behavioral rules do too, but likewise don’t begin to cover everything.)

So the issue is by no means simply a “matter of approach”. Spinning it that way might be useful for vendors, but it won’t be helpful to business analysts.

We need to think soberly about the true range of business rules and the fundamental distinctions that exist. If not people will end up very frustrated on the other side of the DMN hype cycle. We can do better than that, and for the sake of the DMN standard, we should.

P.S. For discussion and examples of the fundamental distinction between behavioral rules and decision rules see Appendix 3 in the DecisionSpeak Primer … available for free download on http://www.brsolutions.com/b_ipspeakprimers.php.  By the way, DecisionSpeak and its companion TableSpeak are *quite* concerned about integrity in decision models.

The answer is no, but read on.

RuleSpeak 3.0 featuring tabulation was just recently released. See http://www.brsolutions.com/b_ipspeakprimers.php (free download). RuleSpeak is structured natural language for expressing business rules in the clearest way possible, yet very precisely.

I know some people argue that decision models will supplant the need to express any and all individual business rules. Pardon me, but that’s either highly uninformed or not-so-innocently misleading.

Having said that, do I think there’s much to be gained from decision analysis and a revival of decision tables (a very old technique)? Absolutely. We’ve been busy fine-tuning methods for a good number of years.

I’m glad we waited. The results speak for themselves. See the new DecisionSpeak and TableSpeak (free downloads) on that same webpage.

All 3 ‘Speaks’ are highly complementary … as of course they should be! You need all these tools to be successful with business rules. By the way, all 3 ‘Speaks’ are business-oriented and tool-independent … as they should be(!).

written in response to Jacob Feldman: http://www.ronross.info/blog/2013/05/07/response-to-decisionspeak-tablespeak-annnouncement/

Jacob, Thanks! And I agree with you about the ‘executable’ part.

Our emphasis is on business-friendly, business-driven models. I believe DecisionSpeak and TableSpeak move things forward significantly in that regard. There’s no reason why decision models have to be oriented to IT development. If they are robust, they will nonetheless be executable.

I would sound a note of caution. Decision models are no silver bullet. There are issues of semantics (vocabulary) and integrity (restrictions) to be addressed.

And they don’t cover even the majority of all business rules – especially behavioral rules. If you throw everything you (should) know about business rules out the window when you use decision models, you will be in for a very rude awaking.

I’m glad we did not rush to the market. We’ve taken our time to do our homework with respect to theory (which has been out there for a great many years) and to hone our approach in real-life consulting work.

I think the results speak for themselves!

guest post by Jacob Feldman

First of all, congratulations on your new Primers that provide very detailed convention sets for the decision management domain. I quote from your documents:

* DecisionSpeak™, a set of conventions for expressing the meaning of operational business decisions.
* TableSpeak™ is a set of conventions for business-friendly representation of decision tables and their meaning (semantics) in declarative fashion.

Naturally, my first thought is: can we make these conventions EXECUTABLE? More precisely:

Can we help subject matter experts (not programmers) to:
- create documents that follow these conventions?
- automatically validate (enforce) compliance to these conventions?
- execute the compliant documents?

After a quick walking through the documents, I think the answers are YES. We, at OpenRules, should be able to build OpenRules templates (in Excel) that supports these conventions and to direct users how to apply these templates to create, validate, and execute concrete decisions, decision tables, and other types of rules. There are certainly many details how better to address certain constructions described in TableSpeak™, but they all look solvable to me.

Previously, we provided a similar implementation as soon as another decision modeling methodology (TDM) was published. Now we are working with James Taylor making business requirements created by his newest DecisionFirst Modeler executable. As you know, OpenRules is also working on a reference implementation for the DMN as this standard comes to the age. It would be only natural to provide support for the IPSpeak™ methodology. Based on our previous positive experience working with you, Gladys, and other experts from BRS, I am looking forward to making IPSpeak™ executable.

http://openrules.com

As part of the April announcement of the new 4^th edition of my book Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge, I’m pleased to make available some additional complementary (and complimentary!) downloads:

Decision Analysis – A Primer: How to Use DecisionSpeak™ and Question Charts (Q-Charts™) – 49pp
http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free)

Decision Tables – A Primer: How to Use TableSpeak™ - 121pp
http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free)

Tabulation of Lists in Rulespeak®: A Primer – Using “The Following” Clause - 16pp
http://www.brsolutions.com/IPSpeakPrimers (free)

We’ve comprehensively written-up state-of-the-art experience and insight in these important areas. I hope you will make the most of them!

P.S. Do have a look at other items of interest: http://goo.gl/WPV7O

I asked: What is a Business Capability? How Do Business Rules Relate? The Missing Man in Business Capabilities? http://goo.gl/JLLdx

Guest Post by Ralph Whittle, independent consultant

This is a most interesting topic, but one I fear will NOT yield answers to your questions. Considering all of the LinkedIn “capability advocates” who have actively participated in other various discussions, why have they NOT responded to your posting during its six months listing?

Perhaps the “capability advocates” have realized that they can respond to your posting, but ONLY with indeterminate comments, and these are NOT real answers! At the end of their typical response, you will still NOT have the very much needed “guidance (aka business rules)” you mentioned, just more imponderable opinions! 

I too, wish to see the formally accepted “guidance (aka business rules)” on capability modeling and mapping, along with some real industrial strength examples. Abstract examples are good, but they need to be supported with real ones.

Where are the seminal documents, articles and research papers from any historical capabilities related archives, which describe how capabilities are designed and developed? Since capability modeling and mapping are usually associated with the Business Architecture, where is the analysis of the approach that was used to determine that capability artifacts meet specific architecture criteria?

For that matter, where is the formally documented and accepted capability modeling and mapping, ontology and metamodel? Surely these documents exist, but where are they?

 Maybe as in your posting, my questions may get responses, but not answers!

The Question: I asked for feedback on LinkedIn about using agile for target business problems focusing on an area subject to regulations, contract terms & conditions, agreement/deal provisions, business policies, etc. (Sound like your area?) The best reply I got back …

Guest Post by Sujatha Ramesh
Sr. Manager, Business Solutions at LearningMate

“In highly regulated environments, documented evidence of decisions, impact and approvals are a necessity. Agile practices discourage maintaining extensive documenting, relying on ‘sitting next to the team and explaining’ instead. You will generate precious little proof of what transpired and the decisions taken in doing so.”

Location: Online Interactive Training

Why Attend …

Working on developing requirements? Wrestling with complex business process models? Harvesting business rules to implement in a rules engine?

Many professionals are finding there are big gaps in their current approaches:

• Their requirements methodology fails to capture and specify decision logic.
• Their business process models mangle the logic for making decisions.
• Their decision management platforms support implementation but don’t connect to the business.

This training provides proven, pragmatic solutions. It provides 8 easy steps so you can think clearly before you implement.

More info:  http://www.attainingedge.com/online-training-decision-analysis-and-decision-tables.php

Rhetorical question? Well maybe, but I’ll answer it anyway.

A data model is a tool to organize what a company knows about the world so it can remember it in a systematic way. So yes, that’s like DNA. (I think ‘concept model’ is more accurate than ‘data model’, but let’s leave that discussion for another day.)

But DNA does more. It encodes the rules to guide the processes to sustain and reproduce life. For a business, those would be its business rules. That’s the part many people miss.

By the way, DNA encodes the building-block concepts and rules in a declarative, not procedural, way … just as data models and business rules should be represented.

Location: Online Seminar

Overview

This highly pragmatic series shows you how to achieve unparalleled success in business analysis. It details the innovative techniques you need for a business-driven approach, and how to apply each for dramatic improvements in the quality of business requirements. Find out how you can achieve simpler, smarter process models, and a huge boost in business agility. The innovative approach taught in this seminar has proven itself time and time again in achieving true business solutions. It enables you to transition smoothly into system requirements and design, and then into successful roll-out of a complete and highly effective business system.

Register Full Series

More info: http://www.attainingedge.com/online-training-business-analysis-with-business-rules.php

Session 1. Introduction to Business Analysis with Business Rules

Next Session: June 4, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

• What it means to be business-driven
• The role of business rules
• The importance of factoring
• The importance of audience
• The art of business re-think
• Business model vs. system model
• Steps: developing the business model
• About the pattern questions for capturing business rules
• Ensuring complete business alignment

Register Session!

Session 2. Creating a Strategy for the Business Solution

Next Session: June 4, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm(ET)

• How strategy is structured
• Steps: developing the Policy Charter
• Identifying and addressing business risks
• Where business policies and business rules fit
• Developing and refining the business tactics and business policies
• Looking for holes in the business solution
• Getting ready for modeling business processes
• General pattern questions for harvesting business rules
• Completion checklist for the Policy Charter

Register Session!

Session 3. Creating Business Process Models and Harvesting the Business Rules

Next Session: June 5, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

• What is business process from a business perspective
• Developing business process models with business rules
• Behavioral rules vs. decision rules
• Where operational business decisions fit
• How to avoid gridlock, meltdown and other pitfalls
• How to handle special scenarios
• Specific pattern questions for harvesting business rules from business process models
• Steps: developing the process model
• Completion checklist for business process models

Register Session!

Session 4. Creating a Business Vocabulary and Harvesting the Business Rules

Next Session: June 5, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm(ET)

• Concept analysis: How to figure out what terms really mean
• Guidelines for definitions — do’s and don’ts
• The concept model: Developing a structured business vocabulary
• Visualization
• What to avoid
• Specific pattern questions for harvesting business rules from the concept model
• Steps: developing the concept model
• Completion checklist for the concept model

Register Session!

Session 5. Completing the Business Model: Business Milestones, More Business Rules, Metrics and Rule Management

Next Session: June 6, 2013 @ 10:30am – 12:00noon (ET)

• Developing business milestones: State transition from the business perspective
• Specific pattern questions for harvesting business rules from business milestone models
• Steps: developing the business milestones
• Completion checklist for business milestones
• Specific pattern questions for harvesting business rules for locations, links, roles and work products
• Developing violation responses for behavioral rules
• Completing the business model
• Metrics, policy performance and performance indicators

Register Session!

Session 6. Creating Business Requirements from the Business Model

Next Session: June, 2013 @ 3:30pm – 5:00pm(ET)

• Using the business model to develop the system model
• Steps: developing the system model
• What the system design must support: ability statements
• Developing ability statements
• Business rule management
• Business alignment – proven results

Register Session!