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Additional Response to: Business Rules vs. Expert Systems – Same or Different?

by Ronald G. Ross on May 18, 2012

guest post by Ryan Trollip, Practice Director, Decision Management – www.prolifics.com
‘Expert system’ covers a pretty broad swath. Rules engines in the business world, in practicality, and in the majority of implementations, are simply operationalizing decisions, whether derived by predictive modeling or prescriptive business rules (e.g., regulatory). The conditions that reach a decision are largely pre-determined [...]

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Response to: Business Rules vs. Expert Systems: Same or Different?

by Ronald G. Ross on May 16, 2012

guest post by Hafedh Mili, Professor of Computer Science at University of Quebec Montreal and Computer Software Consultant
I agree that expert systems and business rules tackle different problems. Expert systems tackle two problems:
(1)   Difficult problems with no exact solutions – requiring heuristic knowledge.
(2)   Scarcity of expertise.
Hence, their first applications tackled complex engineering (and medical [...]

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Business Model vs. System Model: eCommerce

by Ronald G. Ross on May 11, 2012

In yesterday’s post I talked about the difference between business models and system models: http://goo.gl/CMMPi  To make a long story short, business models talk directly about real-world things (as business people do); systems models talk about surrogates for real-world things (as system designers do). Not the same thing!
Some people argue that the separation between business [...]

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What’s the Difference Between Business Requirements and Functional Requirements?

by Ronald G. Ross on May 10, 2012

We’re teaching our online training course next week: Business Analysis with Business Rules: From Strategy to Requirements. http://goo.gl/Vnko3 Hope to see you there!
Naturally, we’ll be talking a lot about business requirements. Are business requirements the same as functional requirements? No!
Functional Requirement vs. Business Requirement
Wikipedia describes a functional requirement as …
“a requirement that defines a function [...]

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Follow-Up on ‘Harvesting Business Rules’: Business Rules vs. Expert Systems

by Ronald G. Ross on May 9, 2012

The guest post by Cecilia Pearce earlier this week (http://goo.gl/QL9zL) stirred up an unexpected controversy, one that deserves clarification – are business rules and expert systems the same? No! 
Business Rules 
Business rules are organizational rules created for the purpose of running day-to-day business operations. Business rules always have an original source in the form of some [...]

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Understanding Strategy as a Key Business Analysis Tool: It’s Not Business Process!

by Ronald G. Ross on May 8, 2012

John Matthias recently wrote this about our new book, Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules[1]:
“I especially liked the discussion about the mission and goals. I still see business process analysis in organizations I visit where the goals are not articulated well, and the results are not useful. (I’ve done it myself.) It’s [...]

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Harvesting Business Rules??

by Ronald G. Ross on May 6, 2012

guest post by Cecilia Pearce
Are we actually harvesting the business rules?
To harvest something you are required to go to a designated area to gather the crop or fruit. ‘Harvesting’ implies you ‘grew’ the business rules with deliberate purpose – cultivated special ground, keep it watered and weeded, watched over it as it matured.
This is not [...]

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To-Do Items, Checklists and Out-of-Tolerance Business Events … Business Process Problems?

by Ronald G. Ross on May 3, 2012

Does a to-do item constitute a business process? No. Does a checklist constitute a business process? No. Does an out-of tolerance event constitute a business process? No. Analysis of the following case study illustrates.
The take-away: “Process” shouldn’t be force-fit to every aspect of business operations. That kind of ‘Big-P process’ perspective as I frequently [...]

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R.I.P. Straight-Line, Old-School Processes!

by Ronald G. Ross on May 1, 2012

Consider the business rule: A vehicle must not exceed the posted speed limit. Some of the issues for this business rule are (a) how do you detect a violation and (b) how do you respond to a violation.
These issues raise the question, whose process is it? Are we talking about the process of the person [...]

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Business Agility vs. Agile in Software Development: Not Related!

by Ronald G. Ross on April 23, 2012

Business agility results when the IT aspect of change in business policies and business rules disappears into the plumbing.  All artificial (IT-based) production-freeze dates for deployment disappear and the software release cycle becomes irrelevant.  The only constraint is how long it takes business leads and Business Analysts to think through the change as thoroughly as [...]

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