CONF THUR Main Screen 29 July [Compatibility Mode]

What You Need to Know about
Decisioning with Business Rules
Process Days Conference – July 29, 2010
by Ronald G. Ross
Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC
Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal, www.BRCommunity.com
Chair, Business Rules Forum Conference, Oct. 17-21, Washington DC
References:
Business Rule Concepts (3rd Ed),
Ronald G. Ross, 2009, BRSolutions.com
Principles of the Business Rule Approach
Ronald G. Ross, Addison-Wesley, 2003
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About Ronald G. Ross
Ronald G. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC
(BRSolutions.com). BRS provides workshops, consulting, publications, and
methodology supporting business analysis, business rules, business vocabulary,
decisioning, and rule management. His popular public seminars, the first on
business rules (starting 1996) and the longest-running in the industry, are given
through AttainingEdge in North America and IRM-UK in Europe.
Mr. Ross co-develops ProteusR, BRS’s landmark methodology, featuring
numerous innovative techniques including the popular RuleSpeakR (free on
RuleSpeak.com, now also in Spanish, German and Dutch). These are the latest
offerings in a 35-year career that has consistently featured creative, businessdriven solutions.
Mr. Ross is also Executive Editor and regular columnist of BRCommunity.com
and its flagship on-line publication, Business Rules Journal. Sponsored by
BRS, BRCommunity.com is a non-commercial vertical community for
professionals working in the field. Mr. Ross was formerly Editor of the Data
Base Newsletter from 1977 to 1998.
Mr. Ross is recognized internationally as the “father of business rules.” He has served as Co-Chair of the annual
Business Rules Forum Conference since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in
the 1980s, and an editor of the two landmark BRG papers, “The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance
in a Volatile World” (2000, revised 2005, 2007) and the “Business Rules Manifesto” (2003). He is also active in
OMG standards development for business rules and business models, including SBVR.
Mr. Ross (RonRoss.info) is the author of eight professional books. His newest are: Business Rule Concepts (2009),
a third edition of his popular, easy-to-read handbook, and Principles of the Business Rule Approach, AddisonWesley (2003). An earlier work, The Business Rule Book (1994, 1997), was the seminal work in the field. Mr. Ross
received his M.S. in information science from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his B.A. from Rice U.
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What is Possible?
One Organization’s Achievement
Financial Services – Credit Card Fraud Detection
Business Set-Up
Suspicious transactions kicked out to fraud specialists for manual inspection.
Fraud specialists are an expensive and largely non-scalable resource.
Scenario
The bad guys pick up and move shop from Idaho to Manhattan.
Transactions deemed suspicious by zip code yield a 10x increase in volume.
Additional selection criteria (e.g., location of store, type of store, frequency of
use, size of transaction, etc.) introduced to keep the volume of kick-outs
relatively constant.
Achievement
Before rules engine … elapsed time: 30-60 days.
After rules engine … elapsed time: 3-6 days.
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What is Necessary!
Separating the
Business Rule vs.
Software Release
Life Cycles
Business Workers
Software
Release
Cycle
Business
Rule
Life Cycle
IT
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What is Possible?
One Organization’s Achievement
Home Mortgage Department – Major U.S. Bank
Automated Decisioning Department
One of the most mature in the world.
“It's not an accident that the bank is in good standing in this financial crisis.”
Achievement
Software released about twice a year by IT.
Rules changed every 1-3 weeks by business analysts.
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What is Necessary!
Business Traceability = Requirements Traceability
Managing the
Business
Governing
Rules
Practicable
Rules
Operating the
Business
Running the
Systems
Traceability!
Accountability!
Transparency!
Automated
Rules
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What is Necessary!
Rulebook Management: the skills,
techniques and processes needed to
express, analyze, trace, retain, and
manage the decision logic used in
day-to-day business operations
Focus: Manage decision logic as
a business problem rather than a
technical problem.
General
Rulebook
System (GRBS)
Goals: Ensure that ...
Basic business know-how is always
accessible to those duly authorized.
Business Workers
Business policies, regulations, and
contractual obligations are interpreted
in a faithful, repeatable and transparent
fashion.
Reference:
Business Rule Concepts (3rd Ed.), Chapter 3
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What is Possible?
Testing
Software
Release
Cycle
“We do enough analysis of new business
rules, that it is literally not worth the cost
of going through traditional IT testing.”
Business Workers
Business
Rule
Life Cycle
IT
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What is Necessary!
When is the best time to find you
have anomalies in your rules?
Business Leads
Business Model
(CIM)
Logic Architects
Computable
Model (PIM)
$
$
Tech. Engineers
Platform-Spec.
Model (PSM)
$
$
Technicians
“Code”
Workers
Functioning
Bus. Capacity
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What is Possible?
Rule Anomalies …
Linguistic Equivalences
A permanent employee must receive a salary.
An employee who is permanent must receive a salary.
Modal Equivalences
An order over $1,000 must not be accepted on credit without a credit check.
An order over $1,000 may be accepted on credit only with a credit check.
Logical Equivalences
A high-risk customer must not place a rush order.
A rush order must not be placed by a high-risk customer.
Subsumations
A rush order must have a destination.
An order must have a destination.
Conflicts
A shipment must include more than 1 order.
An out-of-state shipment may include only 1 order.
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What is Necessary!
A best practice for expressing rules …
Business rules must be understandable ‘out of context’.
Meaning
Expression
Example
Say fully what you
mean …
… and mean fully
what you say.
Discourse-Dependent Rule:
Please mute your phone.
Discourse-Independent Rule:
A webinar attendee must mute
their phone while not speaking.
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What is Possible?
RuleSpeak
®
… for business-friendly business rules in structured natural language
… in English (2.0), Dutch, Spanish & German … released April, 2009
… free on www.RuleSpeak.com
Origin:
Developed by Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRS) starting in 1996.
Applied
in hundreds of projects since that time.
Standardization:
One of three reference notations used in the creation of SBVR.
Fully consistent with that standard.
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What is Necessary!
Business Rules … Criteria for making
minute-to-minute business decisions
Classifications and Computations
Human Behavior
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
“… criteria for conduct or action.”
Business rule:
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a
gold customer if the customer places
more than 12 orders
Is this a gold
during a calendar year.
A gold customer must be allowed
access to the warehouse.
Let this customer
in or not?
… Yes!
customer or
not? … Yes!
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What is Necessary!
Design Decisions = Business Decisions
Software Vendor:
“… Depends on your definition of
‘business rule’...
… If I change a definitional rule like
‘customers only have 1 address’ to
‘customers can have multiple
addresses’ …
… then that can have deep
consequences on [automated]
systems.”
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What is Necessary!
How many “ifs”?!?
Claimant
makes claim
Take Claim
Information
yes
if policy
number
missing
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
no
if policy
number
invalid
Never embed
diamonds (or series
of diamonds!) in your
business process
models.
These diamonds
always represent
business rules …
which are best defined
independently.
Embedding diamonds
will hopelessly
complicate your
model.
yes
no
if policy
expired
if valid claim
yes
no
if claim
denied
Adjudicate
Claim
If claimant
name invalid
if fraud suspected
yes
no
if claim accepted
If no
location
given
yes
no
How many rules?!?
If …
“Anytime you stick your
business rules in your process,
you’re dead.”
Roger T. Burlton
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What is Possible?
A best practice for business process models …
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
Business Rules …
Govern the interpretation of a conditional.
Provide criteria for branch points in the business
process model.
if valid claim
Adjudicate
Claim
Rule: A claim can be considered valid
only if it has all the following:
An active policy.
A claimant.
An incident.
Decision-making may involve a very large
number of business rules!
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What is Possible?
Incremental
Development!
Claimant
Claims
Clerk
if response
makes claim
Verify Basic
Claim
Information
Take Claim
Information
if invalid
claim
Notify
Claimant
Request
Additional
Information
if insufficient
information
if valid claim
Adjudicate
Claim
Adjudicator
if claim
denied
if fraud suspected
if claim approved
Claims
Payment
System
Notify
Claimant
Claimant
if no
response
Claimant
Upon
suspicion
of fraud
if no fraud detected
Make
Payment
“… the tasks required
for an enterprise to
satisfy a planned
response to a business
event …
… from beginning to
end ...
…with a focus
on the roles of actors,
rather than the actors’
day-to-day job”
Janey Conkey Frazier
Claimant
Process Claims
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What is Necessary!
“The staff at GE observed that flowcharts, formulas, and narratives were
inadequate when working with complex logic.”
Reported in Communications of the ACM,
Vol 4, No 11 (November, 1961), pp. 516-520.
“The … design and implementation practices of software engineering
have a weak point: the design of the internal logic of the module or segment.
Such … designs should be disciplined, easily understood, and checkable.”
Decision Tables in Software Engineering, by Richard B. Hurley,
Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1983, p 1.
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What is Possible?
Analyze
Deploy
Capture
Price
Offering
“Making information more
readily available is important,
but making better decisions
based on information is what
pays the bills.”
Execute
Smart (Enough) Systems
by James Taylor & Neil Raden
Prentice-Hall, 2007, p. 337
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What is Necessary!
Analyze
Deploy
Capture
Price
Offering
Execute
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What is Possible?
Analyze
Deploy
Solutions!
Faster deployment
… Decision Cycle Time
Rule engines
… Business Rules
Capture
General
Rulebook
System
(GRBS)
Price
Offering
Execute
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What is Possible?
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA)
Decision
Service
“pricing”
Business Rules
Repository
The business rules are now...
Traceable Improvable...
Re-usable Auditable...
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What is Necessary!
Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) ??
Decision
Service
“pricing”
Business Rules
Repository
“Business events are a more natural
way for business people to express
requirements than 'services’ …
SOA is a flawed paradigm. The focus
should be on 'what event is happening',
rather than 'what service do I need'.”
Mike Gualtieri
Forrester
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What is Possible?
About Decision Tables
Rule: The applicable sales tax rate must be the percent in
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table for a given year and county.
County-by-Year Sales Tax Table
Year
County
2008
Harkin
6.95
Lopes
8.2
Qwan
7.35
Quail
4.0
2009
6.73
8.3
9.0
4.5
2010
6.15
8.4
9.0
5.0
2011
6.15
8.3
9.0
5.5
2012
6.15
8.4
6.75
6.0
2013
6.15
8.2
6.75
6.75
2014
5.75
8.2
6.75
7.0
2015
5.95
8.4
7.5
7.25
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What is Necessary!
About Decision Tables
Classifications and Computations
Human Behavior
“… criteria for shaping concepts.”
“… criteria for conduct or action.”
Business rule:
Business rule:
A customer is always considered a
gold customer if the customer places
more than 12 orders
Is this a gold
during a calendar year.
A gold customer must be allowed
access to the warehouse.
Let this customer
in or not?
… Yes!
customer or
not? … Yes!
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What is Necessary!
Observation:
This is the natural format for
decision tables in the real world.
Three
Multi-Value
Criteria
One Table
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What is Possible?
Library Fact Model
is used to check-out
library
card
is authorized for
Business Rules
encompass ...
library
works
for
holds
is charged
against
borrower
typically 100s
librarian
owns
is owned
by
makes
Facts
typically 10X Terms
Rules
typically 10X Facts
borrower type
person
Terms
organization
assessment
is made for
book
fee amount
Rule: A library card may be used to check-out a book
only if the book is owned by a library for
which the card is authorized.
Legend
= Term (+ Definition)
= Fact
= Category
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What is Possible?
Defining Terms:
The Concepts Catalog (Glossary)
An ASSESSMENT is a specific monetary charge against a Library Card for abuse
of books or borrowing privileges.
A BOOK is any document, publication or work in any media that is held by or
available through a Library.
A BORROWER is a Person or Organization of interest to a Library that can
potentially borrow Books.
A BORROWER TYPE is the category of a Borrower -- i.e., Person or Organization.
A FEE AMOUNT is the total amount of an Assessment.
A LIBRARIAN is a certified professional who can work in a Library in an official
capacity.
A LIBRARY is a repository of Books and/or a lender of Books to Borrowers.
A LIBRARY CARD is an agreement between a Borrower and a Library indicating
that the parties agree to abide by the Library’s book-lending rules.
An ORGANIZATION is legal entity that can act independently of particular persons.
A PERSON is an individual who acts in his own behalf.
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What is Necessary!
Case from the Electrical Transmission Industry
… “Load”
Business Meaning
1. A network component that uses
energy
2. The operating level of a network
component that uses energy
3. A party that owns a network
component that uses energy
4. A state of a network component
5. A part of the output of a
generating resource
6. Constancy (“firmness”) of
energy usage
7. Demand for energy
… Context of Business Usage
… Physical facilities that use
energy
…Amounts of energy that physical
facilities use
… Organizations participating in
the energy marketplace
… Resources that can sometimes
use energy (“net”)
… Measurements of energy
production
… Projections of energy production
and usage
… Aggregate network estimates
“Our people think they are talking to
each other using the same language …
but they often aren’t!”
One Executive’s Lament
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What is Necessary!
Business Rules Manifesto
Business logic is built in
building-block fashion.
The Principles of Rule Independence
by Business Rules Group, 2003
www.BusinessRulesGroup.org
Business rules express
basic business knowledge.
Article 3. Deliberate
Knowledge, Not A
By-Product
3.1. Rules build on facts, and facts build on
concepts as expressed by terms.
Reference: Business Rule Concepts,
(3rd Ed.), Chapter 1 and Part II.
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About Business Rule Solutions, LLC
More Ways to Find Out More …
Co-Founders
Ronald G. Ross
Gladys S.W. Lam
Oct. 17-21, 2010
Washington, DC
Public Seminars …
Ottawa – Sept. 21-24
Public Seminar …
London – Nov. 18-19
Over 14 Years Exclusively in Business Rules
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Decisioning with Business Rules: Summary
Thank You!
~~
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