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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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A Quick Review of What “Rule”, “Business Rule” and “Business Policy” Mean (in the Real World!)

by Ronald G. Ross on October 25, 2012

From Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules, by Ronald G. Ross with Gladys S.W. Lam, An IIBA® Sponsored Handbook, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, October, 2011, 304 pp, http://www.brsolutions.com/bbs
You can find definitions and discussion of all terms in blue on Business Rule Community: http://www.brcommunity.com/BBSGlossary.pdf

   Reference Sources

[BMM]
The Business Motivation Model (BMM) ~ Business Governance in [...]

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Q&A: Simplifying Business Process Models and Achieving Dynamic Business Processes – All By Using Business Rules

by Ronald G. Ross on October 16, 2012

The OMG standard  SBVR[1] distinguishes between two fundamental kinds of business rules[2]:

Definitional rules (including decision rules) are about shaping knowledge (and cannot be violated).
Behavioral rules are about shaping conduct (and can be violated).

Question: Should definitional rules be included in business process models?
Answer: You might have 100s or 1,000s of business rules about determining [...]

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The Debate Continues: Expert Systems vs. Business Rules

by Ronald G. Ross on May 29, 2012

Here is my latest post in the on-going debate over decision management systems, expert systems, and business rules.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a fundamental difference between rules whose intent is enforcement (however strict) vs. rules whose intent is to make (expert) decisions.
Rules whose intent is enforcement (e.g., speed limits) revolve around:
* detection of violations (think speed trap)
* level [...]

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How Business Processes and Behavioral Rules Relate: The Fundamental Insight of Business Rules

by Ronald G. Ross on February 29, 2012

In football, when a referee throws a flag, the results of the most recent transform (play) are undone. In effect, by enforcing a rule, the referee prevents or negates the new state (yardline and sometimes the down) and enforces some other state. That’s the way behavioral business rules[1] work. Speed through a school zone and [...]

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Externalizing Semantics from Business Processes … Why the Procedural Approach is a Flawed Paradigm for the Knowledge Economy

by Ronald G. Ross on February 24, 2012

For IT professionals the state of processes has always reigned supreme. In procedural approaches the internal state of a process is represented by some token. Most computer languages use that approach (the token generally falls through lines of code sequentially). Many current approaches to business process modeling do as well, at least implicitly.
But why should [...]

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‘Concept Model’ vs. ‘Fact Model’ … Where in the World are the Instances?

by Ronald G. Ross on February 16, 2012

In a dramatic development, the new release of SBVR (1.1) has replaced the term “fact type” with “verb concept”, and the term “fact model” with “concept model”, for all business-facing use.[1] Why the problems with “fact type” and “fact model”? Let me see if I can explain.
First some background: Since its inception in the [...]

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A Buzzword Like ‘Decision’ that Covers Everything May Soon Cover Nothing

by Ronald G. Ross on February 7, 2012

One thing that concerns me about ‘decision’ or ‘decision management’ is that everything potentially becomes a decision. Software vendors love it when complex problems can be reduced to a single buzzword. Engineers of true business solutions should hate it.
I’m sure I’ll be accused of negativism, so for the record, let me say that top down [...]

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Bots “Communicating” (Funny!) … What about SBVR and RuleSpeak?

by Ronald G. Ross on October 10, 2011

If you want to hear state-of-the-art machines (bots) talk to each other, see: http://goo.gl/LEIMI Funny! Rude and petty … just like humans sometimes. I don’t think we’re quite there on Star-Trek-style communication with machines(!).
If you want to see a suitable set of guidelines for writing unambiguous business rules that machines should be able to understand, [...]

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