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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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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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Batting 1000 on Amazon: Our New Book “Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules” Hits Eight 5-Star Reviews (of 8) on Amazon

by Ronald G. Ross on February 22, 2012

Our new book has been extremely well received this far – very gratifying. See the Amazon reviews: http://goo.gl/8lk4u and more comments: http://www.brsolutions.com/b_building_business_solutions_reviewers.php
Two reviewers, George McGeachie and Maria Amuchastegui, made same criticism, both giving the book a 5-star rating anyway. So let me clarify.
George McGeachie wrote: “The point about business rules and deployment is made on [...]

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How Important is Basic Business Vocabulary? … A Short (True!) Story

by Ronald G. Ross on February 14, 2012

Guest Post
I was teaching a BA class, trying to convey the value of having a prototype. The class was divided into ‘developers’, the BA, and the ‘executive’. The developers were given a bag of duplos, multiple shapes and colors. The executive was given a bag with a completed duplo creation. The instructions were for the [...]

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Why So Much Ambiguity and Miscommunication in Requirements? … Something We’ve Learned from Business Rules

by Ronald G. Ross on December 1, 2011

Let me share something we’ve learned from our work on business rules. The world’s leading cause of ambiguity in expressing business rules is missing verbs. Stay with me now.
Consider this sample business rule: An order must not be shipped if the outstanding balance exceeds credit authorization. As a first-cut statement, that’s perhaps not bad. The [...]

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Requirements and Business Rules … All Just a Matter of Semantics (Really)

by Ronald G. Ross on October 24, 2011

It almost goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that you must know exactly what the words mean in all parts of your business requirements. In running a complex business (and what business isn’t complex these days?!), the meaning of the words can simply never be taken as a ‘given’.
Some IT professionals believe that [...]

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Is Agile Development of Business Rules Possible? … And What Would You Call It If It Is?

by Ronald G. Ross on October 18, 2011

I’ve been exploring the meaning of ‘agile’ with respect to business rules. In our new book, we say:
“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 [...]

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Why Don’t Requirements Approaches and IT Methodologies ‘Get’ How to Use Strategy as a Technique? … Not Acceptable!

by Ronald G. Ross on October 13, 2011

An enterprise architect recently said to me, “The motivation (why) column of the Zachman Architecture Framework is the most underrated, underutilized construct in architecture.”
Absolutely correct. Even worse, IT methodologies (that is, the people who create and use them) don’t realize how far afield they are on the matter. As a result they cause business people [...]

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Just Organizational or Application Silos? … Worse, You Have Semantic Silos

by Ronald G. Ross on October 3, 2011

Difficulties in communicating within organizations are by no means limited to communications among business workers, Business Analysts, and IT professionals. In many organizations, business workers from different areas or departments often have trouble communicating, even with each other. The business workers seem to live in what we might call semantic silos (reinforced by legacy systems). 
A [...]

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