Business Rules

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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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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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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What is the DNA of a Business?

by Ronald G. Ross on March 26, 2013

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 [...]

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Omissions? My Cumulative List of *Desktop, Internet and Personal-Device* Problems for which Business Rules, Decision Management, and Related Technologies are Suited

by Ronald G. Ross on December 9, 2012

Find your desktop, internet or personal-device application in this list? If not, please let me know!
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Authorization
… identity, certification, software licensing
Collaboration
… routing, RFI/RFP work management, document development, software specifications
Data Access
… consistency checking, content management, customized displays
Data Distribution
… pocket PCs, smart phones, network planning, design and management
e-Business
… self-service, dynamic pricing, configuration, fulfillment, [...]

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Omissions? My Cumulative List of *Business Problems* for which Business Rules, Decision Management, and Related Technologies are Suited

by Ronald G. Ross on December 9, 2012

Find your targeted business problem in this list? If not, please let me know!
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
… customer care, personalization, complaint management
Distribution
… scheduling, routing, dispatching
Financial
… settlement, disbursements, allocation, billing, account management, credit worthiness, procurement, audit
Fulfillment
… eligibility, configuration, inventory management, order management, certification, supply chain
Governance
… regulatory compliance, adjudication, reportability, [...]

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Omissions? My Cumulative List of *Industries* Having Applied Business Rules, Decision Management, and Related Technologies Successfully

by Ronald G. Ross on December 9, 2012

Find your industry in this list? If not, please let me know!
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Banking, Credit, Financial Services, and Securities and Capital Markets
… portfolio management, investment planning, loan origination, online banking, defined benefits, pension management, anti-money laundering
Education
… scheduling, certification, evaluation, scoring
Entertainment and Gaming
… royalties, casting, distributions
Government, Taxation, Regulation and Safety
… targeted inspections, entitlements, citizen [...]

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Need Guidelines for Expressing Business Rules? RuleSpeak!

by Ronald G. Ross on October 26, 2012

RuleSpeak® (free on www.RuleSpeak.com) is a set of guidelines for expressing business rules in concise, business-friendly fashion using structured natural language.  The guidelines arose from over 15 years of real-life consulting work by our company on hundreds of projects. They’ve been thoroughly road-tested(!).

RuleSpeak was one of three reference notations for the 2007 OMG standard SBVR[1], [...]

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