A Playful Riff on “Decide”

by Ronald G. Ross on May 24, 2013

A person close to the DMN (Decision Model Notation) standard recently wrote:
I can’t see how you can object to the idea that decisions can be automatic, or used for detection, unless you maintain that decisions can only be taken by people?
 
My Response
Putting theological questions aside, in the beginning there was man. Well, people. Well, [...]

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The DMN definition of ‘decision’ … I don’t think so(!)

by Ronald G. Ross on May 24, 2013

A person close to the DMN (Decision Model Notation) standard recently wrote:
In DMN a decision is deliberately defined very broadly … 
“a decision is the act of determining an output value (the chosen option), from a number of input values, using decision logic defining how the output is determined from the inputs”.
My Response
I’ve [...]

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My 3 Biggest Fears Regarding the DMN (Decision Model Notation) Standard

by Ronald G. Ross on May 23, 2013

A person close to the DMN (Decision Model Notation) standard recently wrote:
“Under DMN we would say that the automatic detection of the violation of a constraint is indeed a decision.”
My Response …
Which part of any definition of any of the following terms in your statement would in any way, shape or form lead [...]

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Business Rule Analysis: Practitioner MasterClass Series

by Ronald G. Ross on May 23, 2013

[ October 1, 2013; 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. October 2, 2013; 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. October 3, 2013; 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. ] Location: Online Seminar

Overview

Do your business processes always produce correct and consistent results? If not the problem probably lies with your business rules and decision logic. Business Analysts need the right techniques to fix these problems – process models, use cases, data models and other requirement techniques just aren’t right for the job. This hands-on series [...]

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Announcing New Online Interactive Training: Decision Analysis & Decision Tables: All About Modeling Decisions

by Ronald G. Ross on May 23, 2013

[ November 20, 2013; 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. November 21, 2013; 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. ]  

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 [...]

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Calling everything a decision? That does no more good than calling everything ‘thing’!

by Ronald G. Ross on May 16, 2013

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 [...]

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Will Decision Models Supplant Business Rules?

by Ronald G. Ross on May 15, 2013

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 [...]

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Open Letter re: Decision Models

by Ronald G. Ross on May 7, 2013

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 [...]

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Response to DecisionSpeak / TableSpeak Announcement

by Ronald G. Ross on May 7, 2013

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 [...]

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Looking to Find Out What Decision Analysis is About? Make Business Processes & Business Architectures Smart? Design Business-Friendly Decision Tables? Write Business-Friendly Business Rules? >>> Free downloads …

by Ronald G. Ross on May 6, 2013

As part of the April announcement of the new 4th 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 [...]

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